Choosing Motherboard and memory, Help needed

[djm68]

This is a bit of a follow up post of the one from yesterday.
I didn't get reactions to it but that's ok because there's a slight change of plans.

I decided this morning to build my system around my overclocking 'ambitions', limited by budget and I've decided to sail on the advice from people who know more about this then I ever will in my state as absolute overclock beginner.
I've been reading a lot but I lack all the experience and making just a theoretical choice based on sometimes confusing information isn't an easy thing.

my revised choices are:

The cpu:
My choice was be between a Pentium dual core and an Amd Athlon x3.
A reason for choosing Intel is that I read that only the Phenom ii X4 versions from AMD do not suffer at all from the L3 bug.
my I eye fell on the E5300. It's nicely priced with no significant speed difference with the E6500 I had in mind earlier.

The motherboard, I need your help choosing a suitable one.
I notice that many tuners publishing good overclocking results use Gigabyte boards so is this the choice to be?
Due to budget, if it will be a Gigabyte, I am limited to the G41 chipset versions.

The memory.
This is a confusing part because the information I read on many places seems to contradict.
Would I have no overclocking plans, the choice is easy: match the FSB with the Memory frequency and buy a solid brand.
With overclocking in mind you really need to help me out.

These are my issues:
A Gigabyte motherboard with, as reviewed by buyers, good overclocking qualities is the G41M-ES2L and it is nicely priced, however...
The DDR2 memory goes as far as 800 MHZ which is a nice match with the 800 MHZ of the E5300, no problem here.
But could it be wise to put 1066 MHz in to make an easy frequency raise possible? Gigabyte claims this board can handle 1066 Memory in overclocked condition.
I presume that raising it just a little instead of all the way to 1066 will not be a problem?
And in general, what about the 800 MHz limit's for the memory? Does this mean that a large increase above these frequencies will not be possible at all without instability problems?

I can also choose a DDR3 board, however...
the minimum memory speed is 1066 MHz which is higher than the E5300's 800 MHz.
As I understand, overdimensioning memory is never a problem since the motherboard automatically brings the memory frequency down to match the fsb's.
But what I understand is that DDR3 memory operating at the same speed as the DDR2 version works significantly slower due to the higher latencies and slower speed is not an overclockers wish. (Do I interpret this right?)
On the other hand, on this website, in "how to build a computer" choosing a DDR3 board is highly recommended and for overclocking purposes it seems ideal.
Is DDR3 preferred because it operates faster generally, no matter the higher latencies, because of the overclocking potential, or because of both?

summarized:

- Should I choose Gigabyte for a motherboard or are other brands like Asus or Asrock ok as well for overclocking purposes?
- Can I choose a DDR2 board limited to 800 MHZ and put 1066 MHz memory in being stable enough when the memory frequency goes up?
- Should I choose a DDR3 board and will I not loose memory speed?
- What is your opinion about the stability and speed of the Athlon CPU’s and is the L3 cache problem a reason to choose Intel in the concerning price ranges?

I hope you can help me out.

 

[djm68]

An update...

I just saw that gigabyte G31 versions are still for sale here for no money.
They do not have the USB issues the G41's seem to have due to problems with the ICH7 southbridge and more important, they, officially stated, support DDR2 1066 MHz OC memory.
Is this to prefer above DDR3 1066 MHz memory?

I just read positive things about this motherboard here, but something puzzles me.
People use it with 800 MHz, I wonder why not with 1066 MHz memory when you have OC plans?
And the RAM speed can not be adjusted. Well no it really starts to spin between my ears.

Isn't it the case that when you adjust the FSB speed, every motherboard with OC features will automatically adjust the RAM freqencies if set to auto, so that there has to be no worry at all about this?
It's really starting to get foggy now in my brain.
To much reading, still being in nono land can sometimes do no good.

 

[Know Nuttin]

Choose a DDR3 platform. DDR2 is dead as a platform for a new build. Unless you have existing DDR2 to utilize (which it does not sound like you have)

The old days of requiring memory frequency to match CPU FSB frequency are gone.

In your situation, I'd go with AMD, given your budget. The Athlon X3/X4 line are good, and do not have L3 so don't worry about the L3 bug affecting these CPU's.

As for motherboard, anything based on the 880/890 chipsets are a good buy, you can get them pretty cheap now.

 

[djm68]

Thanks for your answer.

The x3's seem attractive.
How come their is a such preference voor amd cpu's?

And do you mean that no matter the motherboard brand, 880 and 890 motherboards are very reliable as far as stability after oc is concerned?

The asrocks come into view quiete dominantly, they are nicely priced.
For Biostar the same.
About Asrock I often read things however about features not always working such as standby and auto fanspeed.
Overclocking seems to be a top feature on asrock boards

Do you know anything about this reputation?

 

[McGrace]

+1 ddr3

Soon enough DDR2 will end up more expensive than DDR3. Happens all the time because they don't make as much of the older stuff, so if you want to up it down the road, it becomes expensive. Ran into that one myself

 

[Know Nuttin]

asrock are good budget boards. If you realy want to push, the asus/gigabyte boards are what I would gravitate to.
Preference is based on their pricing compared to intel at the sub $100 market (in canada). you can't get an intel quadcore near $100 but you can get a few amd's.
880/890 boards are the most recent chipsets for AMD.
stability after oc is not 100% guaranteed as there are too many factors other than mobo to consider. Depends on the level you want to OC, and the luck you have with your chip/mobo, your PSU and if it is up to snuff, your cooling solutions, your memory (if you decide on overlcocking that as well)...

 

[djm68]

the reason I would like to overclock is much of my pc occupation is converting films.
With my current P4 630 it takes approx 1:1 with nero vision and the cpu takes mostly 99% of alll capacity leaving no room to do someting else.
I became enthousiastic when I saw that 25% gain and more is possible.

If have been searching for videobenchmarks from oc-ers before and after oc but I havent'been able to find one.
When I would succeed in a 25% frequency gain, does this mean that for instance video converting will go 25% faster or doesn't it work this way

 

[Know Nuttin]

You don't provide information on the video source and bitrate, and the resulting video file format/converter used/bitrates. In short, you aren't providing much information for us to go with.

Ideally, you would go with a dual HDD setup to have your source and destination files separate.

Your encoder would be multi-threaded.

See where this is heading?

 

[djm68]

I understand the two HDD part, the multithreaded encoder is new for me.
What's the benefit?

And what's the effect of the overclocked cpu on the encoding speed?
Does it work the way a suggested above? Will 25% frequency gain result in 25% increase in encoding speed.

Another point is that I really like to work on a silent pc, well as silent as can be.
So I would like to use the overclocking only on heavy and time consuming moments.
Overclock software for xp might come in handy for this.

And I have a another question about motherboard choice.
Hypothetically, when you have two boards of the same brand, using the same chipsets, but one a cheappy and the other expensive, is there a chance that overclocking might work better on one of the two?

 

[Know Nuttin]

I understand the two HDD part, the multithreaded encoder is new for me.
What's the benefit?

And what's the effect of the overclocked cpu on the encoding speed?
Does it work the way a suggested above? Will 25% frequency gain result in 25% increase in encoding speed.

Another point is that I really like to work on a silent pc, well as silent as can be.
So I would like to use the overclocking only on heavy and time consuming moments.
Overclock software for xp might come in handy for this.

And I have a another question about motherboard choice.
Hypothetically, when you have two boards of the same brand, using the same chipsets, but one a cheappy and the other expensive, is there a chance that overclocking might work better on one of the two?

mutithreaded will give you more performance gain than overclocking if the app supports it, in general
its not normally that linear. Assuming that the cpu is the only bottleneck, the % overclock will yield close to the same in performance increase.
Yes, chipset is not the only factor. quality of the capacitors, power design and layout, and the bios can all play big factors.