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lil help deciding

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Havoc_1710

New Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2002
im about to get a p4 3.06 chip, watercooled, and 512 corsair xmspc3200 c2

only prob - i cant decide on a mobo.

im tossing up between 2 boards,
the asus p4g8x - good overclock options, but i dont like the serial ata raid controler, or the onboard sound they use, and ive also read about a few bugs (ram slot voltage etc)

and an msi gnb-max fisr - looks cool, heaps of great features, but on the pre-release boards - the max. fsb was set at 124 - so i couldnt use the 3.06 chip to its full, second - theres no overclocking options in the bios, you can only use "fuzzy logic 4"

also, the agp speed is linked to the fsb - so at 150 fsb - the agp port would run at 75 mhz, whereas on the asus board, they are completely seperate - so no matter how much you overclock , the pci and agp speed is locked.

or, if anybody knows of any other boards using the granite bay chipset, and can support hyperthreading - could you please let me know so i could look into them as well

cheers.
~Havoc
 
P4G8X is not avaliable as of yet, but ive heard good things about the board, and since its asus, im sure all the bugs will be straighted out with bios updates.

MSI is a pretty good board, but isnt an overclocker.

Did u look at GA-8INXP? its a great overclocker, has some perks that Asus doesnt have, and a bit cheaper too.
 
never thought about a gigabyte board - ill have a look at it, but im swaying towards the asus board - it can overclock to something like 4.13 ghz (thg review)
 
dude those things that these sites do are like extremes!!! you wouldn't dare run your cpu at that speed (4.13) 24/7... i mean that would be the fastest way to fry a 700 dollar chip eh :eek:
 
Skip the Asus board. It's power regulation is pathetic compared to the Gigabyte's. And by the water cooling setup, it looks like you're gonna be overclocking your CPU seriously.

From Tom's 4.1 GHz report at http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20021216/p4_41-05.html :

"With an average CPU power dissipation of 107 W, the Prometeia from Chip Con will normally maintain a temperature of minus 28 degrees Celsius. This increases the power dissipation when overclocking the P4 from 85 W to an enormous 135 W. This represents a rise of 63 percent. This power consumption is extremely stressful for the voltage regulators. In our first test with the Asus P4G8X, which is fitted with a two-phase regulator, the components overheated so much that they shifted on the board. An efficient ventilation system prevents the solder from melting. Remember, we are dealing here with an overclocked CPU drawing 78.3 amps through four voltage regulators."

If this doesn't show the antiquated nature of ASUS voltage regulators on their best boards, I don't know what does. One thing's for certain: The P4G8X is not the board to buy if you're planning for the future. It may run current CPU's OK, but nothing over, say, 3.6 GHz with any reliability. And if one MOSFET craps out, you're screwed. On the Gigabyte, the addin power supply card can back up the already beefy 6 MOSFETS on the motherboard itself.

The Gigabyte'll be my next board...;)
 
some of the guys over at extreme systems are getting phenomal numbers with the asus 850e board .one guy cranked his fsb to 173 with 4x memory timimgs on a stock board. but some of the boards do indeed have power issues.
 
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