best motherboard with barton 2500+??

I am a abit guy when it comes to overclocking. I am not to familier with all the new mobos out there. Please enlighten me

since you're an abit guy you're in luck cuz the best OC board out there now is the abit NF7-S

rev 2.0 nf7-s can be found here http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?cPath=181_598&products_id=866

newegg also has this board for 114 shipped free

it's a great motherboard.

just have to remember to do the L12 mod on your CPU (might be a wire in socket method), due to the bios issue with 166FSB chips

and don't go too crazy with the voltages, as the NF7-S has some voltages which would not be so healthy for your CPU.

Yup Abit NF7-S is the board you want

OK but this is what i dont get
I am using a koolance watercooling case now if i get a 2500+ will i get to go past 200mhz fsb or not ? I am reading about all these mods for the nf7. I have done a pot mod before but would rather keep from doing so. Is there a better method to reach 233 mhz fsb in the bios? Is this pencil trick easy?
thanks

there is no pencil trick for tbreds... and to achieve high fsb you need good ram

well, if you use the wire in socket method to set your multiplier, and modify the L12 to set the default fsb of your CPU to 133, then you should be able to get 200 with no effort at all. (assuming you have RAM which does 200)

overclocking-wise, a 2500+ should be able to get to 2200Mhz with no problem. (That's a 3200+ PR rating.)

a lot of people seem to get to 2300Mhz.

edit: yeah, there's no pencil mod since the Palomino days...

cherryp00t said:

there is no pencil trick for tbreds... and to achieve high fsb you need good ram

Click to expand...

I think he was refering to the pencil trick for the resistor on the nf7-s for the vdd mod not a tbred. Good ram isn't the only thing good cooling, psu, volt's, and knowledge of how to overclock will also help.

I feel like a noob... I forgot what vdd stood for...

vdd / chipset voltage

Ok im not a noob at overclocking but this is what i have right now
enermax 435watt psu
xms corsair ram pc3200
cpu gold 200 koolance "yeah its pretty good actually"
3 80 mm exhaust fans
This is my situation , i want to buy another amd . I am coming from a xp2000+ 2nd week made week 41 i think. I got it at 1.9 gighertz . I would like to exchange my mobo with the nf7 , keep my ram but get the xp2500+ to hold me off till the amd 64 comes down in price in the next 6-9 months.
I really hope to get at least 2.4 gighertz but the main question im trying to ask you is this. Would I have to do any mods at all to get my barton 2500+ to reach 2.4-2.6 gighertz? I read up on some of the specs of the nf7 and it looks like the sound card is pretty decent. I would however be disabling it so i could overclock higher of course. Can i buy a nf7 2.0 without sound?
Oh yeah the Volt dim mod is that key to get 3.2 volts? or is it already available on the bios?

So I'm also a OC newbie. Learning a lot (just started researching this area yesterday 10/4/03).

If I want to get the Abit NF7-S + a AMD Barton 2500+ 333FSB, and run it at 11x200 (or higher) I need to have Dual DDR 3200 or better correct? That is I can't run PC2700 ram because when I OC I have to teart the system like it was a 400FSB 3000+ or 3200+?


OT question - again newbie Is it really true that if you swap your MB (or CPU?) for a NT based OS (in this case winXP) you should/have to re-install the OS?

jonspd: thanks. that was embarrassing.

from now on I will not feel like a fool when someone mentions vdd!

but is that mod decessary? the NF7-S has quite high chipset voltage settings I thought... or are the standard ones not enough?

vejita-sama: it depends for swapping MBs. I've had successful swaps without repairs and unsuccessful ones.

but the most you need to do is a repair. not a reinstall.

UnrealCpu: 2.4~2.6 is possible, but is on the high side. but you have watercooling, so it might be possible. The cpu voltage selections are definitely enough on the NF7-S.

here are the max voltages for the NF7-S:

Core: 2.3v, Dram: 2.9v, chipset: 1.7v, AGP: 1.8v.

I dont believe dual DDR is necessary to get past 200mhz fsb . It is just a little boost over regular ddr ram . Not much from what i heard.
I would rather use my old ram and wait another 8 months.
i have 2x 256 meg xms corsair pc3200 platium good for 220 fsb i believe

UnrealCpu said:

Ok im not a noob at overclocking but this is what i have right now
enermax 435watt psu
xms corsair ram pc3200
cpu gold 200 koolance "yeah its pretty good actually"
3 80 mm exhaust fans
This is my situation , i want to buy another amd . I am coming from a xp2000+ 2nd week made week 41 i think. I got it at 1.9 gighertz . I would like to exchange my mobo with the nf7 , keep my ram but get the xp2500+ to hold me off till the amd 64 comes down in price in the next 6-9 months.
I really hope to get at least 2.4 gighertz but the main question im trying to ask you is this. Would I have to do any mods at all to get my barton 2500+ to reach 2.4-2.6 gighertz? I read up on some of the specs of the nf7 and it looks like the sound card is pretty decent. I would however be disabling it so i could overclock higher of course. Can i buy a nf7 2.0 without sound?
Oh yeah the Volt dim mod is that key to get 3.2 volts? or is it already available on the bios?

Click to expand...

Its doubtful you would have to do any mods to your motherboard to reach 2.4-2.6 ghz. The main thing that will help you attain the high overclocks is good cooling, voltage (which the NF7 has in abundance, up to 2.3v vcore) and a sturdy PSU.

The NF7-S has the soundstorm audio, which is very nice. I have been using the onboard sound on my rig and if it is cutting into my OC at all I am not bothered by it. I have a pretty good overclock right now and I think I still have more room to grow. I know my board can hit higher fsb than it is right now since I have had it running higher than that before I got this new cpu. If you don't want the soundstorm audio the NF7 is probably for you (as opposed to the NF7-S with the soundstorm audio).

I would say the only "mod" you may want to consider is the L12 mod, if you cannot attain the very high FSB that you want. Its a very simple dropping of a couple of wires into your cpu socket (well there are other ways to do it, thats just the way I recommend). Some people can get high FSB without this mod however. Its easy stuff though, no soldering, no conductive paint etc etc.

EDIT:
Forgot to address one of your issues (regarding the pc2700 memory). You can run your system with pc2700 and achieve a pretty good overclock on your cpu, you will just reach your FSB ceiling quicker and then will need to resort to raising the multiplier (I would not recommend running your memory out of sync and raising fsb higher, it hurts performance more than it is worth). With a barton chip and the NF7 motherboard you have access to the entire range of multipliers so you could run your chip at even 100fsb if you really wanted to and still get a big oc out of it.

UnrealCpu said:

I dont believe dual DDR is necessary to get past 200mhz fsb . It is just a little boost over regular ddr ram . Not much from what i heard.
I would rather use my old ram and wait another 8 months.
i have 2x 256 meg xms corsair pc3200 platium good for 220 fsb i believe

Click to expand...

Actually dual channel will offer a slight increase in performance (most testing that I have seen says maybe 5% increase in benchmarks) but dual channel actually makes it more difficult to achieve higher fsb. I think its perfectly acceptable to run high fsb without dual channel if you are in a money crunch.

I thought the L12 mod is not needed with the barton 2500+?
What does this mod do for me?