Best Overclocking Pentium 4 Board

[Revx]

My uncle is calling on me to help him build a new system, he is bent on intel and with the 1.6a chips offering actual value, i didnt argue, now i'm not very literate in the sense that i don't know what's what on the intel scene. What i need to know is what's a nice over clocking board. What he's looking for is a board with 200mhz fsb options in bios(which would seem only via has) on board good sound(he wants on board) and 4 or more usb ports for 150 or under. Any ideas guys? thanks.

 

[batboy]

Asking for the best motherboard is like asking which car is the best. That's subject to debate. But, lots of us are using Abit TH7-II with pretty good success. It uses RDRAM memory of course. It has lots of great overclocking goodies including one of my favorite features where you can fix the AGP and PCI buses at default speeds. The FSB goes up to 200 MHz too. Actually, I was thinking it might go up to 250 to 255 MHz or so, but I don't remember for sure. It has two USB ports and another extra USB header on the motherboard, although you can always add more USB ports to any system by getting an inexpensive USB hub. The TH7-II does have on-board sound. Newegg.com is currently selling these mobos at $146 US plus $8 shipping. The same version with RAID cost a little more. Ummm, no I don't work for Abit.

 

[Revx]

which reminds me, he's going ddr, 512mb(2x 256) OCZ PC3000

 

[Revx]

so yeh it's gotta be a ddr based solution that can bring out the potential of pc3000 which either means sis or via, and as i said i really don't know what's what on the intel scene

 

[jstnomega]

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000300

 

[batboy]

You can get Intel chipset mobo with a DDR memory bus now. Check out the Abit BD7, but I don't know about all the features.

 

[Revx]

i mainly looking for a board with 5.1 onboard sound, possibly on board lan though its not a must, and up to 200mhz fsb in bios + 4 or 6 usb ports.

 

[Keruberne]

So how about a Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra it is a good board it have 6 usb and LAN + 5.1 onboard Sound and it supports DDR PC-2700

And very overclocker friendly

 

[Revx]

i've pretty much decided on the asus p4b266, the soyo looks fine but its bios is holding it back, in every review i saw they couldnt get it past 115mhz fsb

 

[Ralf Hutter]

I don't know what reviews you're reading, but if you take a spin over to [H] or Aandtech you'll see lots of people that are running this board to 150+ FSB with no trouble.

This is probably the most popular OCing P4 board there is right now, so I really doubt that too many peeps are having the 115max FSB problem.

I run mine at 128 which gives me 2.3Ghz @ 340Mhz RAM speed on my 1.8A. I've run mine up to 133 FSB with no trouble but I like the faster RAM speeds I get by keeping it under 133.

 

[Revx]

yeh well i've seen the p4b266 run at some extremely nice speeds, 172mhz with pc2700, now, for my uncle, im gettin a 1.6a and the volcano 7+ this should allow for an extremely nice over clock, 2.6ghz or past(yes i've seen it done many times with similar configurations) so i'm gonna stick with my decision for the p4b266 thanks for the info on soyo though, maybe a new bios revision is out then

 

[Vfrjim1]

Good choice, got a P4B266 @ 2667 with a 2.0a, 133 hz rock stable, but memory scores are much better at 132hz, so there I stay, good luck!

 

[Revx]

i plan on taking the fsb much higher than 133, it's just too bad this wont be a system of mine

 

[ariman]

Not all flowers with P4B266. Mine has been in RMA for nearly month now. Some kind a bios leak; OS strarts to korrupt slowly (2-5 days) untill some applications start to jam. Took Me 2 months to identify the problem. That included ALL HW change, aprx 20 new OS install, few bios version trial etc. etc.

Finaly noticed flashing bios was the key, it fixed the problem but only for temporaly. But before that, what a work and nerv trial!

Might consider My choice twice nowadays.



"Shadow in a gold string..."

 

[Revx]

i'll come to that if it occurs, but you can't base your opinion of the line as a whole on one board, and rma for a month? what company did you buy from? that's pretty bad.

 

[ariman]

Company is a local importer: http://www.gnt.fi/Yleiset/Yleiset_e.htm

Got connection for resales.
Last year I had to RMA IBM GXP -serie (yes those famous ones) HD, took Me 7 weeks to get a new one, so I was avare wath to expect.

And no, I should not judge based on My experience, but looking foorums You see a lot of problems conserning USB, voice and temperature monitoring. Thats not all glory for this board, eh?

 

[Flu!d]

The Gigabyte 8irxp-p4 looks like a nice board!

Marketed as being fully overclockable with control over the FSB/DDR clock and CPU/AGP and DDR voltage adjustment, 6 pci slots, onboard SoundBlaster sound, 3 X DDR slots, Onboard RAID supporting ATA 133, goldplated ATX power connector and Duel bios....

Apparently it even has the 1/5th and 1/6th pci dividers just like the Gigabyte GA-60XET Socket 370 mobo!

In fact this looks to be the GA-60XET replacement mobo for P4 based systems and will very likely be my next upgrade....

 

[ariman]

Took a call today for this Importer: All boards sold, no replacement board available. They are expecting to have more, but if they dont, I´ll have My money back.

Yes, Gigabyte looks fine, but that model is not available here.

I´ll think I go for Intel board if they can´t get Me new ASUS.