Ai7? or IC7(g)? or P4C800E?... Need to know ASAP!

[Vio1]

Hi, can anyone suggest the best board to get: for overclocking potential... functions, voltages, stability. I want to push the board as far as possible.

The price diff bewteen the Ai7 and Ic7 is about $15... would it be better to get an i875 then?

Need to know ASAP!

 

[Vio1]

Also, would i have a prob with compatability with my Corsair pc3500 and the Ai7?

 

[batboy]

It depends mainly on how much vdimm you want. The IC7 is very stable and will give a little more performance over the AI7. But, the AI7 has good vdimm up to 3.2v (IC7 only goes up to 2.8v). The AI7 will support the Prescott and the IC7 won't. The Asus P4C800 is a good mobo, but I know less about it than Abit. The P4C800 can relatively easily be vdimm modded. The Asus mobo does overvolt vcore a little and I don't like the BIOS as much. Abit can be a little picky about what RAM it likes with high overclocks. Seems that RAM with BH-5 chips work the best. I think the Corsair PC3500 uses CH-5 chips unless this is older RAM. Regardless, all three are good overclockers.

 

[raven]

I chose the AI7 over the IC7 because the AI7 was cheaper, plus it was getting great reviews. And I also heard that some older IC7's were having voltage problems with the memory. Also, to help my case, i didnt need gigabit lan, and the AI7 came packed with cool features!! I know it was a springdale chipset, but for me, it wasnt an issue because the ~5% performance increase that the Canterwood would have given, wouldnt have made that big of a difference, for my uses atleast.

If you are looking to push a board as far as possible, i would suggest u get a newer IC7-MAX3. its voltage problem has been resolved and plus it is a great board.

I do not think that there will be a problem with your corsair pc3500 in the AI7. Some people have been having a bit of trouble with mushkin LvL II ram because they needed more voltage to run at stock speeds, but i havent heard of this happening with corsair, but i could be wrong. To fix this, you could just stick in some generic ram and get into bios and change the voltage setting, and i believe that also, a bios update would fix this as well. Many people are discussing this issue in the memory section as we speak!.


Raven

 

[althes]

AI7 is rock stable and witha a good chip it reaches 300fsb easy.