New rig.....thinkin of Iwill MPX2

[Vito]

Gonnna be building my 3rd dualie rig and was thinking of doing a bit of o'clocking with my current Palomino xp1600s.
Any thoughts on this mobo?
Or am I better off with???...MSI Master-L...or????

Also.....which heat sinks and fans should I look into? the ones on my current Tyan TK7...are drivin me to drinkin!
I'd like something quiet for once....I won't be doing crazy/nuclear type- extreme overclocking either.

[SickBoy]

Good luck finding a new MPX2 anywhere. Most of the usual suspects online haven't had them for a couple months now. MSI is still producing the K7D Master IIRC.

[IFMU]

Yup pretty much what he said. They have become very hard to get ahold of, about the best chance is to luck out finding one used really.
Originally posted by SickBoy
K7D Master IIRC.
The what? IIRC?

[mateo]

Search eBay, I know its not the best place, but thats the only place where I could find a deal, and it took me a month to do so.

The board is sweet, better than the K7D-L IMHO, as it has FSB adjustments up to 200 MHz. Also, if you're lucky enough to get a Rev. 1.3 (:D), you'll get multiplier adjustments, too. If you can't find one, the Asus duallie is close to it, it gives voltage and FSB up to ~166 MHz I think. About the multiplier thing, best bet is to figure out what you're shooting for in the first place, and then play around with bridges/pins to set the new multi.

[cmcquistion]

I recommend the MSI K7D Master. In my opinion, it is a better board, overall, then the Asus or Iwill, and it's readily available.

If I HAD to get a dually other than the MSI, then I would get the Asus. It's a solid board, too, just not quite as good as the MSI.

[mateo]

Originally posted by cmcquistion
I recommend the MSI K7D Master. In my opinion, it is a better board, overall, then the Asus or Iwill, and it's readily available.

If I HAD to get a dually other than the MSI, then I would get the Asus. It's a solid board, too, just not quite as good as the MSI.

Just curious, where do you think it fails?

[cmcquistion]

Originally posted by loner


Just curious, where do you think it fails?

You mean the Iwill MPX2?

Well, I had one and it was stable as a jellyfish. Absolute junk. I checked Iwill's forums and found LOTS of other MPX2 owners with LOTS of problems. Some similar to mine, some not. There wasn't any advice from Iwill engineers, at all. I banged my head away on it for two weeks and got nowhere. Some MPX2 owners accused me of being some newbie that didn't know how to troubleshoot. That isn't accurate. I'm a Computer Systems Administrator for a living. I work on computers eight hours a day, five days a week. I know how to troubleshoot and fix problems. That board could not be fixed.

I returned that board and got an MSI K7D Master. Since then, I have gotten two more MSI boards, one Asus, and one Tyan. All of them have been good boards, except the Tyan that I had to RMA twice (because they didn't fix it, when I sent it in the first time.)

In my experience with all these boards, the MSI has been the best. Asus takes second. I wouldn't recommend the Iwill MPX2 to anyone. I just haven't had a good experience with it and I have read a LOT of problems from other owners. I also wouldn't recommend the Tyan Tiger MP, because it just doesn't give enough options, it has a documented melt-down problem, and it doesn't have very good performance, due to it's lack of memory tweaking options.

[mateo]

Hmmm...I know of minor issues here and there, but nothing on that scale of instability. Then again, Im sure someone with an MSI has had the same sorts of issues, you get them once in a while with every product line.

[cmcquistion]

Originally posted by loner
Hmmm...I know of minor issues here and there, but nothing on that scale of instability. Then again, Im sure someone with an MSI has had the same sorts of issues, you get them once in a while with every product line.

You're probably right, but that one REALLY bad experience just turned me off from them, permanently.

When I called the distributor, to RMA the board, they said that they were going to stop selling Iwill boards, entirely, because they had a greater than 50% return rate. That spoke volumes, to me.

[Vito]

OUch.......%50?

hmmmm.... I better go K7D-Master.
I got better things to do than sit on my knees cussin and fiddling at the rig wondering why the hell it wont boot or run unstable as a midwestern carnival ride.

[boostland]

No problems with my Rev 1.5 MPX2 so far.
Folds 24/7, renders 3dstudiomax, backs up customers computers, scans @ 3200dpi negs, prints large photos, encodes DVD's,video capturing / editing, faxs emails web and plays games.
It just keeps on going and going it has been the most stable windows computer that I have ever used. I was a real anti M$ person before as I have been using Irix on Sgi's and Solaris on Suns since the late 80's, and I got used to the reliability of these mega dollar systems. The Windows 3.0 users were a kind of a running joke, One guy had over 150 crashes in one day just trying to write a technical report in word.
The Gigabyte that I just recently setup as a server for a customer has been running now for 3 months without a single crash.

[Vito]

thanks for the input guys....
Still llooking for an MPX2....just in case...lol

[SickBoy]

Originally posted by IFMU
Yup pretty much what he said. They have become very hard to get ahold of, about the best chance is to luck out finding one used really.

The what? IIRC?

If I Recall Correctly

[Shade00]

Does the MPX2 have a 1/5 PCI divider?

[cmcquistion]

Originally posted by Shade00
Does the MPX2 have a 1/5 PCI divider?

No.

Like all MPX boards, it only has 1/3 and 1/4th dividers. That is why the FSB it offers is kinda overkill... You can't possibly get that high, because your PCI and AGP bus are overclocked, too much.

[Shade00]

I ask because in boostland's sig he has his MPX2 at 170mhz FSB. I suppose if you found the right components they could survive a 42.5mhz PCI bus...

[bulk88]

I would look in the server market for 66 mhz components and downclock them to 44 mhz

[cmcquistion]

The question is: how much performance is to be gained, by 15-20 extra MHz, over 150? How much money is that extra performance worth?

At 150, almost every device will run just fine, since the PCI bus is only overclocked to 37.5 MHz and you don't have to buy special, high-cost components.