Converting from AMD. Need Assistance.

Well heres the deal. AMD is taking WAY too long to introduce any new chips and Intel is in the lead by far. Ive been itching to upgrade for a while and i have finally got tired of waiting.

Heres my current stuff that im bringing over to the new Motherboard and CPU.

(1) Maxtor 60GB ATA100 7200RPM (Operating System)
(2) Western Digital 120 GB Special Editions (not in raid, for movies and storage)
ATI Radeon 8500 64MB Retail
Samsung PC2700 512MB Single Stick double sided
Yamaha 24x Burner
Pioneer 16x DVD Slot Load

Im gonna be buying the Retail P4 2.53 from newegg with the stock heatsink and fan.

Motherboards ive been looking at are the:
Asus P4B533-E
Abit IT-7

Anything else to consider? Im not a overclocker, i may do some mild overclocking but that would be on very rare occasions. Since im not overclocking i want a motherboard that is fast and extremely stable at stock speeds with some minor tweaking. It must have Raid and able to support hard drives that are not being used in Raid Arrays.

Well I just made the switch last week. I bought the It7Max2. Very very nice board.

My 2.53b from newegg for $252 retail does 2950 @ 1.5v default and does 3050mhz with 1.6v. Very fast. Benchmarks dont tell the tail on a P4. This thing is fast.

The IT7max2 has an option to run the memory at 178mhz with the CPU @ 133. Its call the 3:4 ratio, available when you select the 'low' cpu ratio setting. This is a different world from AMD. Its a whole different game.

Plus the Max 2 has PS2 ports and at least 10 usb ports, I stopped counting them.

I had the retail heatsink on for about 3 hours. When I pulled it off I found that the heat speader was not very flat, the edges were rolled up causing the HS to make very poor contact. I lapped my CPU heat spreader, so much for 3 yr warrany. Lasted 3 hours. LOL. I mounted my MCX462 to the board via a mod kit from newegg just for the P4 boards. Very nice.

I have been benching the heck out of this thing I you want numbers on the IT7max2 email me. I also have a made a BIOS mod to get 3.2v ddr Vmem. With a ATi 9700 I get very close to 17000 mad marks. And 14,500 stock settings.

You wont be disappointed, I know I'm not, I up til 3 weeks ago I wouldnt even use the word "intel" LOL.

Change is good...

[email protected]

I haven't tried the asus board but, I have the IT7 it is a quality board. The one drawback is the lack of PS-2 ports, you'll need to get USB k/b and mouse (good excuse to upgrade) but it has 6 USB ports on board plus headers for 4 more. Also has firewire, lan, on bd 5.1 sound, USB 2.0 and 6 (yes six) ide slots. Four of the ide slots are RAID slots- 8 hd drives

Not a bad board, I think it's better than the TH711-r. Get one you'll not be sorry.

steve

My blanket recommendation for Intel boards for the past few months have been just about anything with the 845E chipset. And if you plan on doing any overclocking, they are still my first choice.

But if you're not, you should take a look at the new 845G boards. They ship with native support for DDR333, and this makes them the fastest DDR boards for the P4 at stock settings. And since they don't cost any more than equivilant 845E boards, its almost as good as free money.

I played around with a new Gigabyte GA-8IGX last weekend and was really impressed. Ton of features, rock solid, F-fast and great price. ($109 at Newegg.)


BHD

Hi

why not use Rambus ram instead of DDR?
i will bet that u will get more out of ur P4 with RD-1066 ram.

I already have a stick of Samsung PC2700. No point in spending another couple hundred bucks. I just threw over 3 grand into my car stereo within the past 2 months.

My TH711 runs rdram, I still like the IT7 with it's ddr. There is much more flexibility with ddr than rdram.

steve