Old Processor Needs a New Board

I have a Pentium 4 Northwood 2.0A processor. I'd like to buy a new motherboard for it that will allow me to run DDR at 400MHz WITHOUT overclocking the processor. Any sugestions?

I prefer:

Intel Chipsets 865 or 875

Gigabyte Lan built-in

SATA RAID

Good overclocking options if I change my mind.

Sound or firewire or anything else is fine.

I like to play with computers but I'm not much of a techie. Please be kind.

No such animal.

I've never seen or heard of a BIOS option from ANY mobo manufacturer that gives you a 1:2 CPU/RAM ratio.

Best you can get is 3:4 (100/133)

if you have 400mhz ram, then why not OC...just a little..

Well darn Lyle. I was afraid somebody would say that, so you're probably correct. I will not find such a beast.

I'm looking for significant gains in performance without getting into the mess of overclocking. Now I say "mess of overclocking" simply because I don't have much experience with overclocking, and I'd really like to run the computer at as normal a speed as possible. Errr, I'd like to run the processor and memory at as normal a speed as possible.

But if there is an older chipset (motherboard) that may meet my needs please don't hold back.

Maybe I could run the DDR at 333 MHz without overclocking the processor? I could slowly increase the memory speed and in that way overclock the processor.

Any sugestions?

yeah, you can do that..not sure if 266 will get to 333 though..depends on the company I guess.

sorry no suggestions for a board.

Hi Cinders,

The total bandwidth of your CPU-chipset sub-system will be 400 x 8 (given the bus is 64 bits wide) = 3200 MB/sec or 3.2 GB/sec.

Even if you run 2 x PC2100 sticks in dual DDR mode, you will get 2 x 2100MB/sec = 4.2 GB/sec memory bandwidth. That is 33% greater than your processor-chipset bandwidth.

The Asus P4P800 comes has superb OC options and GbE. You can also buy DDR400 RAMs (headroom for future CPU upgrades) but run'em at PC2100 in order to suit your proc FSB.

Hope this helps you decide.

Thanks Z_oc, thats the info I needed. I was actually looking at the P4P800 on the ASUS site lastnight. I guess my psychic powers extend even over the vast expanse of the internet.

P-4 2.0A, isn't that a 400mhz fsb chip? I've been looking at the P4P800 and the 800 stands for 800mhz fsb. Don't think that's going to work for you. You need something older for an 'A' processor. Something like Abit BL-7, or maybe an Asus A7N8X, just to name a couple although with a little searching you might be able to find something that will handle all three fsb's.

2.0A will work just fine in a P4P800, it's a NW core and fully supported by the i865 chipset. I had been running a 2.0A in a P4P800 until I recently changed to a "C" proc.

P-4 2.0A, isn't that a 400mhz fsb chip? I've been looking at the P4P800 and the 800 stands for 800mhz fsb. Don't think that's going to work for you. You need something older for an 'A' processor. Something like Abit BL-7, or maybe an Asus A7N8X...

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The Asus A7N8X is for Athlon processors only, socket A.....