P4 Mobo Recommendations please

Here's my situation. When I first build my current machine, it was my first time and I wasn't too concerned with overclocking. I was more worried about not frying components and having a computer that actually worked. It's now a few months later and I'm over all of that.

So, can I hear some recommendations on a good mobo for Overclocking? I'm currently looking at the Abit IT7 Max2 but I'm open to suggestion.

It's a P4 so I'm not worried about hitting some sick FSB though supporting 200mhz for the next Intel CPU's might be nice. It must have the ability to lock the PCI/AGP bus speeds. I have an Asus P4S533 at the moment and I don't want to take the FSB too high because I can't lock these down. I have a 2.53 that hits 2.8+ fine so far but again I don't want to push it on this mobo.

It has to have onboard LAN and sound but these are so common this shouldn't be an issue.

I'm considering either IDE Raid (only one HD atm) or a SCSI card and drive. Is IDE Raid worth it? It would be Raid 0 of course.

I'm not particular about Serial ATA but 8X AGP might be nice.

Finally, if I'm buying a new mobo in the next few weeks, would I have to be out of my mind to buy one that doesn't support Dual Channel DDR?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Great questions.

1) The IT7 Max2 (ver 2) is a great overclocking board. But you're paying a lot for the accessory features like S-ATA and the MAX-style I/O panel. The Abit BE-7 RAID has the features you're looking for, overclocks as well as the IT7, and costs $50 less.

My other pick for a great overclocking P4 board are the Albatron 845PE series. The Asus P4PE has a lot of fans, but I've heard too many complaints to recommend it. I think the best overall board for the P4 is the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra. Its a very good overclocker (it does lack the memory divider of the Abit and Albatron) and has the best mix of features, quality and price of any P4 board. If you don't need to find that last MHz on your FSB speed, this is the board I'd pick.

All have onboard LAN and can be had with IDE RAID. All also have options to fix the AGP/PCI speeds.

The Granite Bay D-DDR boards are great overclockers, but if they are right for you is another matter.


2) IDE RAID and AGP 8X. I look at IDE RAID like a free topping offer from Domino's or Pizza Hut. Its a bonus. I won't buy a board just to get it, and I won't pay a premium for it. But if I can get it on a board I'd want even if it didn't have it and if the price is comparable, sure I'll take it.

If IDE RAID0 actually increases desktop application performance is a subject of great debate. I play a lot of flight sim games and can see a substantial improvement in performance compared to a single drive running on ATA-100/133. But if you don't deal with big files you probably won't see a difference. Of course, if you lose one disk in a RAID0 array you'll lose all the data on both so you have to be disiplined about backing up any files you create.

AGP 8X is kind of the same. It should not factor into your decision to purchase a motherboard or a video card. There are a lot of good reasons to buy the Radeon 9500 Pro, but AGP 8X isn't one of them. This is because there simply isn't a program on the market-or in development-that will require the bandwidth of AGP 8X. By the time you need AGP 8X, your P4/2.53 will be like a P3/500 is today and a Radeon 9700 Pro will be as state of the art as a GeForce 256.

3) If Granite Bay is right for you depends on your future upgrade plans and how much you like to overclock.

The GB, along with the C1 revision of the P4, represent the finale of the 0.13 micron CPU era. They're not going to get better than this. If you want to run this rig for a couple of years or more without a major upgrade, going with a GB today might make sense.

At default speeds, the performance edge the GB has over the 845PE in application benchmarks is so slight I don't think you'd ever see it in daily use. But the GB is a more robust overclocker and this, paired with its ability to match the CPU bandwidth, might give you another six months of useable life compared to an 845PE rig. Over two or three years the price difference isn't bad at all.

But the 0.09 micron era is coming and its going to bring some big changes. If you're going to overhaul this rig in 2004, I would go with a PE today and plan on replacing the board, CPU and memory next year.



Hope this helped-

BHD

It helps alot thanks. I'm going to check out that Abit BE-7 now. Thanks again for all the info!