Best AMD overclocking board

[ronin1967]

I used to love ASUS, swore by them, solid, well built, reliable, durable, never gave me one problem...then I got my EPoX and saw all the things I was missing, tons of BIOS controls, overclocking, and more...

EPoX all the way...

 

[badgers]

my 2 cents
I have an epox 8K3A+ with corsair PC3200 cas2 memory and an unlocked cpu.
with the mult down at 8 I can't really get the board above 180 Mhz FSB.

it does not have a divider for 200Mhz FSB.
it does run stable at 175.
I hear gigabyte has a 1/6 divider to allow you to hit 200Mhz on the FSB(real Mhz not the DDR math which is not really Mhz anymore)
AMD is really FSB limited IMO and unlocking and going for 200 will be what I consider the "best AMD overclocking board" without PCI and AGP getting out of spec.

 

[EluSiOn]

I used Abit MB, Asus MB and now I am using Epox MB....


I would say Epox...... they are just truely amazing.

Abit good but their VP6 nightmare makes me loose faith in them ( they use cheap capacitor and would go bad after a yr or so)

Asus I think they are just too expensive. I cant adjustify paying that kind of hard earned $

Epox, reliable, stable and have everything you want, only if Vcore can adjust higher would be great

 

[wuzzapiman]

reviews say that the soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum can hit just below 200FSB with air cooling. and I intend to do water cooling without unlocking my 2400+ ~ looking for 166x15

 

[donny_paycheck]

reviews say that the soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum can hit just below 200FSB with air cooling. and I intend to do water cooling without unlocking my 2400+ ~ looking for 166x15

Do you mean northbridge air cooling?

 

[Dragon_Engineer2]

reviews say that the soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum can hit just below 200FSB with air cooling. and I intend to do water cooling without unlocking my 2400+ ~ looking for 166x15

I have that board and can't get it past 333fsb.

 

[Tipycol]

...(BIOS menu that lets you adjust voltages and frequencies all in one page)...

Originally posted by dxiw
asus have all the frequency and volts on its own page in bios too thank you very much

Is this feature that important?

 

[wuzzapiman]

I mean CPU air cooling @ like +5% volts

The Epox EP-8K9A2+ looks really promising..does anyone own one of these?

 

[donny_paycheck]

Is this feature that important?

It's a big help. You can look at PCI/AGP dividers, voltages (Vcore, DRAM, AGP), multiplier, FSB, command rate/driving strengths...all the most critical overclocking attributes all on one page. This way you don't have to go between different menu pages to reference other specs before you decide on a new config. When you're tweaking all the time it makes things a lot easier.

ABit was the first to have this. Asus tends to make very feature-rich boards with even more options in BIOS, but in my experiences (A7M266 vs. ABit KG7) they don't hit as high FSB speeds. I've had great experiences with the Epox 8KHA+ and FSB rates (KT266A is still the best chipset for memory bandwidth per mhz, if only it had a 1/5 divider) but the ABit KR7A is still the KT266A board I prefer over it because of the BIOS softmenu. Epox also tends to come out with products the latest, but I've found their products to not justify the extra wait. This is why I prefer ABit above all others. Personal experiences of mine, but offered for your consideration.

 

[Tipycol]

It's a big help. You can look at PCI/AGP dividers, voltages (Vcore, DRAM, AGP), multiplier, FSB, command rate/driving strengths...all the most critical overclocking attributes all on one page. This way you don't have to go between different menu pages to reference other specs before you decide on a new config. When you're tweaking all the time it makes things a lot easier.

ABit was the first to have this. Asus tends to make very feature-rich boards with even more options in BIOS, but in my experiences (A7M266 vs. ABit KG7) they don't hit as high FSB speeds. I've had great experiences with the Epox 8KHA+ and FSB rates (KT266A is still the best chipset for memory bandwidth per mhz, if only it had a 1/5 divider) but the ABit KR7A is still the KT266A board I prefer over it because of the BIOS softmenu. Epox also tends to come out with products the latest, but I've found their products to not justify the extra wait. This is why I prefer ABit above all others. Personal experiences of mine, but offered for your consideration.

Oh ok...I could see why this would be a good argument between boards that perform the same but have a different bios. Just curious as to why this was brought up as a point


Thanks

Tipycol

 

[wuzzapiman]

EPoX EP-8K9A2+ -----looks like the best overclocking board around Vr-zone.com got a 226FSB with normal cooling. It says that you dont have to unlock a thouroughbread in this motherboard. <- If thats true then what would happen if you did put a unlocked T-Bread in?

 

[Tipycol]

EPoX EP-8K9A2+ -----looks like the best overclocking board around Vr-zone.com got a 226FSB with normal cooling. It says that you dont have to unlock a thouroughbread in this motherboard. <- If thats true then what would happen if you did put a unlocked T-Bread in?

When they say you don't have to unlock it, they mean you have the option for the multipliers for 13 and above. In order to get below 13, you still need to unlock. So if you put an unlocked T-Bred in it, you'd get access to the lower multies.

 

[donny_paycheck]

Yeah, AFAIK it's the last L3 bridge you need to connect on tbreds. But it's a whole lot easier than a slew of 5 L1s. Getting the blow-13x multis is what you want anyway, because upping the FSB to max is what performance is all about.

 

[none1]

When they say you don't have to unlock it, they mean you have the option for the multipliers for 13 and above. In order to get below 13, you still need to unlock. So if you put an unlocked T-Bred in it, you'd get access to the lower multies.

NOPE.

1) There ARE KT400 boards that have access to all multis with NO bridge work for the tbreds. So pop in a 2400, choose a multi of 6 or a multi of 14 in the bios. NO L3 trick needed.

There is still questions as to if ALL KT400 unlock the tbred, or only some of them. I've seen posts with the abit and asus confirming this so far.

2) OTHER early rumor is that the KT333 will unlock all the LOWER speed tbreds too. So if you have a KT333 and 1700+ tbred, you have all multis, NO BRIDGE WORK. Aparently not all KT333 do this, I saw some post about the abitKX7-333 being offered a free upgrade, not sure though.

3) I ?THINK? that you only need to do the L3 with a KT333 if you have one of the HIGHER default multi chips, like the 2400+.

 

[JoJoMoJo]

There is no question if all kt400 boards unlock the multipliers thru the way of the socket. My msi kt400 ultra does not but my asus does with my tbred 2200. Unmodified bridges out of the box on the asus all multipliers unlocked I can use 5.5 - 16.5 without a problem.

 

[Tipycol]

NOPE.

1) There ARE KT400 boards that have access to all multis with NO bridge work for the tbreds. So pop in a 2400, choose a multi of 6 or a multi of 14 in the bios. NO L3 trick needed.

There is still questions as to if ALL KT400 unlock the tbred, or only some of them. I've seen posts with the abit and asus confirming this so far.

2) OTHER early rumor is that the KT333 will unlock all the LOWER speed tbreds too. So if you have a KT333 and 1700+ tbred, you have all multis, NO BRIDGE WORK. Aparently not all KT333 do this, I saw some post about the abitKX7-333 being offered a free upgrade, not sure though.

3) I ?THINK? that you only need to do the L3 with a KT333 if you have one of the HIGHER default multi chips, like the 2400+.

Oh ok...thanks for the correction
But I don't get your answer for the third question. What I know is that you can unlock any tbred just by connecting the last L3 bridge, and then you can choose any multi you want on the boards that require the chip to be unlocked manually.

 

[none1]

There is no question if all kt400 boards unlock the multipliers thru the way of the socket. My msi kt400 ultra does not but my asus does with my tbred 2200. Unmodified bridges out of the box on the asus all multipliers unlocked I can use 5.5 - 16.5 without a problem.

DIABLO YOU GOT DA INFO.

Been trying for DAYS to get confirmation on the MSI KT400 ultra, so have others. There are posts on the MSI forum, over at amdmb, ALL over. THANK YOU MUCH.


Now, is your 2200 an "A" tbred or a "B" tbred?

Thanks

 

[JoJoMoJo]

NP bro, makes me little upset though thinking what ya post is just overlooked. I posted that weeks ago. I have a A7V333 and A7V8X from Asus, MSI KT3 Ultra and MSI KT4 Ultra. Putting this same chip the xp2200 airga beleive its "a" core since i got it when they first came out in the Asus 400 board bammmmmm all multipliers unlocked. In the MSI board not even a boot if I change the multiplier settings. Only way I could access them in the MSI is if I did the last bridge connect and than i only had the low multipliers of below 12.5. I use conductive ink so I just wiped it clean and stuck the unmodded chip back in the Asus board. Now my MSI sits on the shelf as a spare for now. Its great Asus did this .......1st.....cough cough.....as far as running above 180 or so Im using not the best ram ......but have ran at over 200fsb. So I dont see where the hype is comming from saying or Implying the Asus isnt stable. I think more than anything its the overclocker clocking the clock I personaly almost bought the Abit board a few weeks ago......but I havent gone back since the T-Bird days and loved the board than. Just am tired of watching Asus kick everyones *** in benchmarks like in toms hardware guide and not owning one By the way reason I got so upset with the other boards was how slow there support was to gain stability or fix bugs thru the way of bios revisions. Msi needs bios revisions bad supporting the newer chips and hey....are they still on the original bios? Not to mention not all there new boards support what hardcore overclockers want...like simple holes to mount waterblocks on the CPU. The overvolting jumper allowing me to take this chip past 2 volts rt in the bios compared to the KT4 Ultra maxing out i think at 1.85...To me that tells me how dedicated a manufacturer is to being the top dog regarding the bios support. Asus is on revision 1008 think thats like four or five now.....it just keeps getting better. I watch people have all these problems regarding "ALL" the boards when installing hardware ect....guess what just put a 9700 pro ati card in tonight replacing my nvidia G4 4600 TI...bammmmmmm booted rt up 8x AGP now working and scoreing 14,100 pts in 3dmark. NPs. Hey I like that new line "Check the System overclocker overclocking the clock" Guess someone supporting another board said it all above......cost a little more but ya get the caddy of boards ..if ya been following the asus in the past toms hardware has basically been makeing asus supply another bios revision not available to the public....cause out of the box it come 1-3 fsb faster on the 133 settings lmao they cant be helped not being overclocked. It was considered a cheat.
http://www17.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q4/021007/index.html

 

[kimber]

well last year i would of said asus.i've used them for many a year and never had problems till my cusl2-c(815e).it just acted alittle buggy when pushing the buss to high.
then i switched to amd and the epox 8kha+.and must say its the most stable motherboard i've ever owned.i can run it up to 164 on full memory timings.at that time my agp starts acting up though.
chaulk one up for epox here.

 

[Cheesy Peas]

KX7-333!
luvly board:d (part from the need of a volt mod)(or 2)