Athlon XP 2000+

[Griz]

I used to surf these forums years ago when these were the cpu's to have but never owned one.

I need to know what is the best overclocker board for this cpu, we've had nothing but problems with the amd and wanted to try a motherboard before chucking our last amd in the trash (wife's comp)

this is the cpu: AXDA2000DUT3C

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon XP 2000+ - AXDA2000DUT3C.html

I want something with an AGP slot and DDR400 ram that is overclockable, preferably ASUS but not required.

And I mean a REAL agp slot (the brown slot not the orange), this board does not have an AGP slot and I dont care what anyone says, has some orange slot that won't take an AGP card (voodoo3 3000, voodoo5 5500, radeon 8500, radeon 9200 etc)

http://www.xpcgear.com/ecs741gxm.html

Hoping some of the old Athlon Throughbred (socket 462) users were still around and could suggest something to give this old machine one last shot.

Asus has a ton of boards for this cpu and I can't figure out what would be best, on-board sound is fine.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Any suggestions from anyone that would care to take a walk down memory lane for this old timer (meaning me ) would be greatly appreciated. I know its old but it had potential in it's day.

Thank You Again,
Griz

P.S. Not worried about all the hardware, I have Corsair XMS (2-3-3-6) DDR400 for it, video cards, etc. Just need the board.

 

[glockjs]

the board i had was a great overclocker if you can even find one...abit nf7-s rev 2 it did have an agp 8x slot. its been a long time to remember the boards that were good overclockers at the time but im sure all that info is buried in these forums tbh.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

Well the A7N8X-Deluxe ver2.0 was the best Asus Socket A board as far as features and overclockability, but it wasn't anything special compared to boards like the Abit NF7-S and Epox 8RDA3+.

There's also another issue to consider: you have an approximately zero percent chance of finding a working specimen of any of those three boards (or most other Socket A boards, for that matter), unless you get one that's had the capacitors replaced, or you replace them yourself.

And I mean a REAL agp slot (the brown slot not the orange), this board does not have an AGP slot and I dont care what anyone says, has some orange slot that won't take an AGP card (voodoo3 3000, voodoo5 5500, radeon 8500, radeon 9200 etc)

The color of the slot has nothing to do with it, and that is a REAL 8X AGP slot on that ECS board anyway. Maybe you've just got a faulty board, or maybe you set something up wrong. (And I don't think a Voodoo3 will work in it anyway, AFAIK it takes a different signaling voltage.)

 

[madhatter256]

I'll soon be getting a shuttle AN35N board back... will try out it's OC capabilities.

 

[eobard]

That ECS board does have an AGP slot. A X4/X8 AGP slot which is keyed to X4/X8 AGP cards. I should know, I had the ASRock version (almost identical) and ran several AGP X4 and AGP X8 cards in it. But it will not take AGP X1/X2 cards as the interface for them is keyed differently. So they will physically not connect. Just to make sure it was an AGP and not one of those "AGI" slots that will only run with a very limited number of graphic cards I downloaded the manual from ECS and it clearly states it is an AGP X4/X8 slot. So it won't take something as old as a voodoo card but should take your ATI 8500 just fine, I ran one in mine for a few years. Either way though Old Thrashbarg is pretty much on the money, you really aren't going to find the perfect 462 mobo laying around. Can you still find Socket A boards? Sure. But the odds of finding one of the best, that can run the fasted GPU and DDR with a very high FSB and extra PCI divisors (or PCI lock) is probably not gonna happen. But by all means look for one of the ones recommended above, just because they'll be hard to find doesn't mean they'd be impossible to get. You might want to add the A7V600 to your list. Most hardcore clockers would balk at taking a VIA over an Nforce chipset but the 600 was the best of it's breed.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

I should also note, I'd personally focus my efforts on getting the ECS going, rather than hunting down another board. Despite its appearance, that ECS board should actually be pretty good if you can get it working properly. It's a very close cousin to the K7S5A that was the darling of the budget segment in 2001-2002, and the Sis Socket A chipsets were surprisingly fast. It's not as overclockable as some of the upper-end boards, but you should be able to max out that 2000+ chip on it with some tweaking.

 

[Dr. McCoy]

Well the A7N8X-Deluxe ver2.0 was the best Asus Socket A board as far as features and overclockability, but it wasn't anything special compared to boards like the Abit NF7-S and Epox 8RDA3+.

There's also another issue to consider: you have an approximately zero percent chance of finding a working specimen of any of those three boards (or most other Socket A boards, for that matter), unless you get one that's had the capacitors replaced, or you replace them yourself.

Don't know what you've decided as of this post but hopefully you'll find/have found something good.

As to getting a A7N if you were to decide on doing that, as long as the caps were replaced with caps of good quality, done correctly and of the correct type to fix it with, replaced caps aren't a big issue. Had to do that to one of my A7N's last year and it still clocks like it always did after the fix was done, the other one still has all of it's original caps.

I'll also say don't underestimate what a good A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 can do.

With the right settings, cooling and the proper BIOS mod for it, these can post some good numbers, comparable with alot of the "Big Boards". The CPU of choice for it is obviously a Barton core XP-M and TCCD RAM is best for it compared to BH-5 since you only get 2.9v's max for RAM voltage and BH-5 sticks need at least 3.3v's to really get going.
The two versions of the A7N you'd want are the A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 and the A7N8X-E, all other variants either won't clock well if at all or don't do nearly as well in comparison.
The big hint to look for are the two blue RAM slots since the mentioned two models have them and all but one other variant has all black RAM slots. The A7N8X Deluxe 1.04 has the blue ones too but it's not the OC'er a 2.0 version is.

The one thing that will guarantee it as being one of the good ones is for it to have the blue RAM slots and a pair of SATA connections towards the bottom-right of the board. That's a A7N8X-E and it's the only variant that is SATA capable, all other variants don't have it.