murrayman said:
I was going to get a nForce2 board but heard that it had poor OC capabilities, so I went against it. Heard about VIA and took it right up.
Hi, murrayman, welcome to the forum, I'm sorry someone misinformed you.
The wisest thing to do is to post q here prior to purchase. There are many knowledgeable people who’ve helped me decide what to buy and what not to buy here in the past.
Here's the scoop on the mobos: There is something called a PCI lock and nForce2s have it and VIA mobos do not.
Increasing the FSB changes the speed of the whole motherboard and everything connected to it unless the mobo has a PCI lock. PCI lock is good because it saves your other components from the negative effects of overclocking.
VIA mobos use a divider.
First of all FSB is more importnat than MHz.
MHz is FSB x multiplier but the idea is to have the highest FSB possible. Without a PCI lock, that may not be an option. This is why:
Lets’ say VIA mobo has a /4 divider for 133 FSB and a /5 divider for 166 FSB.
That means 166 / 5 is about 33.2 default.
180 /5 = 36 and 190 /5=38.
38. That’s 15% out of specs your hard drive and sound cards and everything connected to the mobo is running out of specs.
You go further than that and you’ll be entering into hard drive scrambling territory... unless you have a PCI lock which nForce2 does and VIA does not.
So you see while a particular VIA mobo may have nice features, you would have to give up hitting well over 220 FSB with fine RAM sticks such as this one
twinmos/ch-5 winbond pc3200
http://www.memoryx.net/gn256pc3200.html
which has a track record of hitting 220 FSB and up on nForce2s.
The best heatsink is the $15.99 Thermalright SK-7
CPUs? Read this:
c627627 said:
You can pay 40-something dollars and end up with a good chip.
But if we're talking guaranteed in writing Thoroughbred B,
After all this time it appears that it's still the same choice of three:
1. 1700+ out of pocket cost $49 for guaranteed B: http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_viewitem.asp?idproduct=267 (because it's 40% cheaper than guaranteed DLT3C B)
2. 2100+ guaranteed B at Newegg (because it's $9 cheaper than guaranteed DLT3C B at excaliberpc.com)
3. You laugh at 40% cheaper and $9 cheaper part? Then spend $ on 2500+ Barton
Good luck.