Slot A or Socket A

[Virus]

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[Virus]

I am newbie to overclocking and was woundering which is better to overclock with. Also, what is a motherboard to start with?

[donnie]

Well lets put it this way. How fast and how mush do you want to spend? I myself prefer an Abit KT7A-Raid and T-bird chip.Got my chip and board combo off pricewatch for $335. That was a couple of months ago. They have come down a little since. No dip switches on the board it is all in the bios, which makes so much easier. There are other boards out that are the same way. Oh yea my chip is a T-bird1000 . I also have a Abit KT7-raid and T-bird 1000. I like the KT7A-Raid better. Iam at 1233 watercooled and KT7_raid is 1144 aircooled.

[ExtremeOC]

get a socket A. it's brand new technology.
Athlon Slot A is last gen tech
it's 25u Die, adn teh enw athlon/tbird is .18 Die.
get it.
and its cheaper.

[topjimi]

go with an epox ep8kta2 or 3, the 2 has dip switches on the board(not sure about the 3), and dips make it better for oc'in, cuz if you go too far and it won't post, all you have to do shut it down and flip the dips back 50mhz

[Murphy]

It's this simple:
Slot A overclocks slightly better because of lower base speeds on a same core as a socket A cpu, especially the 0.18um ones, which are marked with a registration number which ends on A, 0.25 ones end on C. The 0.25um goes up to 700. From then on all 0.18um up to 1000MHz. The 0.18um overclock better than 0.25. So athlon 500 0.18um would be great, I have a 500 0.25, but it still does 850 max. Ever seen a socket A 1000MHz do 1700MHz? I don't. Some slot A 700 do 1100, not bad too. But purchasing a slot A platform these days is outdated. Only when you have a slot-A mobo laying around you could do it.
If you start from scratch, best choice is the socket A, thunderbird, they aren't poor overclockers either. Be sure to buy a good and well developed mobo that can handle the latest CPU's, you won't regred it!

Remember that the core design of thunderbird and good old athlon is the same, only the die has shrinked to 0.18um and thunderbird has on-die full speed L2 cache, a little advancement over the old model with L2 cache chips on the PCB in the slot.