which p4 mobo to get...

Ok, heres the deal guys. I'm building my own system (i need an upgrade pretty bad) and i've decided most of the parts, except for the mobo. I looked around and i've having a tough time deciding, but heres what i want it to include: I want something that oc's well, b/c i'm probably gonna take my 1.8 pretty far, and it needs to have agp8x and usb 2.0. in terms of memory, i want 3 or 4 banks of ddr333 supported ram. i dont need sATA or any type of raid device either. oh ya, and granite bays are outa my league . one last thing, if you have any personal experiences with some p4 boards, please include them.

The board you describe doesn't exist.

That was easy, eh?

The only P4 boards with AGP 8X are the Granite Bay, and the SiS and VIA socket 478 chipsets. The GB's cost a small fortune, as you noted, and the SiS and VIA boards are miserable overclockers. (Take a stroll through the MSI and Soyo board subcategories at the top for examples of just how bad they are.)

If you can live without AGP 8X-and you can-you could get a board with the Intel 845PE chipset. These boards are great overclockers, have core chipset support for USB 2.0 (and usually a ton of onboard ports) and are very affordable. They are also the most reliable and stable boards you can get for the P4.

My personal favorites are the Abit BE-7 RAID and Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra. The BE-7 is a slightly better overclocker, and the Giga has a better feature set and a slightly better record for reliability and stability.



BHD

Since were on the BE7 board I have a quick question. I'm also thinking about changing boards. My prob is my BD7II undervolts and I can only get 1.65 volts out of it. What could I expect from the BE7 in regard to voltage settings with a 1.8A?

Thanks for the help BHD. I think it'll come down to one of those two boards, but i think i'll take the non RAID versions of the boards since i dont really need it and i doubt i ever will. So now to this question......Which one do i pick lol

I saw that the gigabyte had vcore up to 1.75 which is high enough but i didnt find out how high the BE7 went. In regards to other features, and in price, they seem truly neck and neck. So if anyone has some personal experiences with those boards, pls tell me.

Running vcore over 1.7vA for extended periods is believed to be the key cause for Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome. Some people have ran high voltages for a long time, but it has been connected with enough fried CPU's to make me advise against it.

Personally, I like the Gigabyte. It is available in a regular version if you don't want or need RAID, too. I like their feature set, and they have a better reputation for reliability and quality than Abit.



BHD


(Prettycool: I've only played around with the BE-7 so I can't tell you if it has the same undervoltage problem as the BD-7II. Sorry.)

Appreciate the input badhead.

Alright, i did some more research and the gigabyte looks pretty good for me. I plan on gettin everything together relatively soon. incase you're interested, heres the system as of now:
p41.8
gigabyte 8PE667
256mb corsair xms3200
western digital 80GB caviar edition (8mb cache)
radeon 9500 128mb (planning on attempting software hack into 9700
lite on 52x24x52
some brand 16x dvd
psu and case...still looking

thx for help, and btw i dont really plan on runnin high voltages, just good to know they're there

Very nice build list.

I'm going to put in a word for a different CD-RW drive. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a LG 8400B and I am thrilled with it. It is only a little slower than the Lite On 52x (nineteen seconds slower to burn a 700MB file) but there is a huge difference in noise. The LG is much, much quieter. I have to strain to hear it over my two case fans.

If you are looking for a good bargain PSU you can't beat the Sparkle/FSP's. They outperform the Vantec/Antec/Enermaxes and cost less, too.



Good luck-


BHD

You can buy a Gigabyte 8PE667 motherboard with the only disadvantage that it doesn't support agp 8x.But is a great overclocking motherboard which supports DDR 333 and usb 2.0

While on the topic of power supplies...how big is necessary? I was thinkin 400w would be enough without overdoing it.

pko/c said:

You can buy a Gigabyte 8PE667 motherboard with the only disadvantage that it doesn't support agp 8x.But is a great overclocking motherboard which supports DDR 333 and usb 2.0

Click to expand...

I don't really think that's a disadvantage. If you see the benchmarks between AGP 4X vs 8X you will see a negligible difference. That's a great motherboard that you have and it's better to save the extra $$$.

Heck, 300W would be more than enough.

I'd split the difference and get the 350.



BHD