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Need some advice on a P4 board purchase

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Deuce

New Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2002
I'm getting ready to buy a few new systems, and over the past couple of years, I've not been following the hardware scene as much as I should've. What I'm looking for now, is a really good board to drop a P4 2.53GHz 533FSB in, and get some nice performance.

I've read the forums and I see a lot of people are set on the Asus P4B533-E, the Abit IT7-MAX2, or the Gigabyte GA-8IEXP. From what I can tell, folks are putting some Corsair PC3200 sticks in, and tweaking the BIOS to bump the 'supported' 266MHZ memory bandwidth up.

I've also read a review on the SiS648 chipset, which supports 333MHz memory on the spec-sheet.

I guess my question would be:

Has anyone done any testing with a SiS648 based board with any degree of success? I read a review of the Shuttle AS45GT, some DDR400 memory, and they reported a very stable system, with the memory bus set at 200MHz.

I've also looked at the Gigabyte GA-8SG667, which actually says it 'supports' DDR400. It does lack an integrated NIC, though. Anyone know if this is a worthwhile board?

The Asus P4S8X is another contender, while only stating it supports DDR333, it does include Serial ATA support, which I have no devices to use on it.

What are your thoughts on buying a board that supports DDR400 or 333 out of the box, as opposed to buying a DDR266 board and overclocking it to get the desired results? (I almost feel like a bad person for asking that on an 'overclockers' forum, but I'd really like to know!)
 
When I put my IT7 together, I used corsair pc3200 in, didn't have to adjust anything. Put it together, and it fired right up.

The IT7 doesn't 'officially' support DDR400, but I am having no problem, I am not up to 400 yet.

steve
 
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