> Does anyone have experience using an ECS N2U400-A or > ECS K7VTA3 motherboard for audio work? Let me guess, you're finding the recent CPU+motherboard offerings from Fry's to be tempting? Well, ECS motherboards are at the bottom of the barrel. You might get something that works, you might get a noise factory, who knows? I know I found my ECS Pentium 4 motherboard to be barely adequate and that was just for a TELEPHONY logging application where I could tolerate a -65 dB noise floor. (OUCH) The K7VTA3 is a VIA-chipset system with all of the usual vagaries and bugs implied thereto. It supports the 266 and 333Mhz FSB AthlonXPs, with corresponding DDR RAM module speeds accordingly. The N2U400 is an nVIDIA nForce chipset motherboard, which is probably better overall, but again given the motherboard company's track record, you might discover the one nForce motherboard which does prove lacking. I've seen some gamers (note, not musicians) compare the nForce2 audio with a Creative Audigy soundcard in terms of quality and performance, but take that with a grain of salt especially in an ECS implementation. I'm sure there are inexpensive PCI sound cards which can do a better job all around. I think I've seen some SB 5.1 PCI cards selling for $29 or so at Fry's recently. The Dark Lord consigned all of his ECS motherboards to the Dark Pits, =MB= -- A focus on Quality.
