need mobo support: P4 2.66 and Dual-Channel DDR266 ECC

I'm trying to find a motherboard* that has support for my P4 2.66 (I believe it is a wilamette core, it's an "intel confidential" chip though so I'm not sure) and my 2x512mb PC2100 ECC memory.

I've been looking at the the Intel 875P chipset but I keep finding motherboards with that only support DDR400 and DDR333 but don't say anything about supporting DDR266 (and some of them say they support northwoods and prescotts but don't mention wilamettes, some don't support ECC, some don't support dual-channel) and by the time I've found a board that looks like it's right I'm paying ~$70 more (~$165) than the low-end 875P chipset mobos and it's a chaintek and I start to feel very re-affirmed of my love of AMD platforms and maybe I'll just burn this stupid processor and ram and buy all new AMD computer instead as it would only cost ~$30 more but the thought of burning a 2.6ghz CPU and a gig of memory makes me cry so maybe someone can help me?

*As a 21st birthday present to me my northbridge chipset heatsync spring-clip decided to rip the clips out of the motherboard on one side and then ripped the heatsync off the chip and now the motherboard is toast and I need a new one...

Ok, the 2.66 is a Northwood. The fastest Willamette made was 2.0, so that's good. You are far better off with a Northwood. If you truly have a "confidential" CPU, then that's an ES (Engineering Sample) which has unlocked multipliers. That's very cool, gives you more overclocking options.

Next is the RAM. Any i865/i875 chipset mobo will have dual channel DDR and will unofficially support PC2100 RAM. I'm pretty certain that you need the i875 chipset to run ECC RAM. I don't think the i865 chipset will support ECC RAM. To be safe, I'd get an i875 mobo just to be sure.

All right, now to find you a decent mobo. A good i875 mobo won't be cheap, but I think it will be well worth the cash. Don't get the Chaintek (yuck). The number one choice I would recommend is the Abit IC7-G if you want onboard LAN and 4 channels of SATA. Newegg has them for $130 plus $5 shipping.

If you had regular DDR RAM, you could get the IS7-E or the AI7 mobos for a lot less. GameVE has the plain IC7 for $110.75 shipped, but it don't have LAN. That's about the cheapest good quality i875 mobo I can find. The Asus P4C800 is good, but they are more expensive.

If you look at the newegg.com refurbs, there is a MSI 975-P Neo for $70 and an Asus P4C800 Deluxe for $109. I bought an IC7 used for only $75 from the forum classified ads a few weeks ago. I didn't see super bargains at this time. Maybe check eBay?

Wow, thanks for the info and the research, and even a speedy reply!

I was leaning towards the Abit IC7-G to begin with and I see from your sig that you've used it and were able to get some OC out of it so it's encouraging that you say it will support DDR266 and my, uh Northwood CPU (yeah... haven't been folliowng intel CPUs much as they are ussually too expensive for me. ty).

Yeah, CPU as a cast-off from HP testing. It'll be nice to get real mobo instead of that HP one, just really expensive Took me forever to get the stupid HP heatsync off of there (planning on replacing it with a Thermalright XP-90) and then I look at the chip and it has "Intel Confidential" stamped on it with "2.66" written on the heatspreader in red marker and I'm like "WTF?". Multiplier unlocked you say? I look forward to seeing about that.

Again, thank you!

Hmmm, Them maximum multiplier it lets me use is 20x. 20x133=2660 Which is what it defaults to. My question being: is this multiplier limit something that is imposed by the mobo (IC7-G) or the CPU (Intel Confidential "2.66" Northwood) or the technology (ie is it the maximum multiplier you can get with a P4 on a 875P chipset)? What can I do to get a higher multiplier?

It rather puts a damper on my overclocking plans to not be able to increase the multiplier.

You might try updating the BIOS. Otherwise, just fix the AGP/PCI to 66/33 and raise the FSB up.