LGA-775: 865PE vs. 915P

[The Unforgiven]

Allright, allright, ya knockethed (Is this a word? Well it is now! ) some sense into me. No PCI lock = BAD. So... Hmmm... So now trying to decide between a decent 865PE and the great DFI 875P-T... I know which is better, I'm just trying to justify spending a bit more on the 875P-T. I'm still paranoid about a refurb, especially in the mobo dept. Thanks for the sense, Sent. Ya probally saved me a lot of cussing down the road.

 

[{PMS}fishy]

Get the refurb. I have had nothing but good luck with them. Worst case is you get a dead one and you have to send it back for a replacement.

 

[Stevie G]

A few questions if I may.....

Isn't the 875 identical to the 865 apart for the ECC support and PAT? According to some 'experts' Abit's GAT and ASUS's Hyper Path make these 865PE boards go harder than their 875P counterparts. I've never done benchmarks on both to confirm this....

Does anyone running 9XX mobos know if there is any PCI bandwidth problems running RAID, Video Capture or Audio interfaces on the PCI Buss with a PCI-Express graphics card?

What do you mean when you say refurb? Is it a second hand mobo....

 

[The Unforgiven]

What do you mean when you say refurb? Is it a second hand mobo....

Factory Refurbished - means it had a problem, and was sent back to the factory and the problem was corrected, or it was missing something out of the box, like a cable or something extra, and was sent back. Either way it should be allright. Hopefully I'll get one of that was mising one or 2 SATA cables or something. lol

 

[{PMS}fishy]

Not always. Sometimes its just a returned MB.

My refurb just came today. Full retial box with all the goodies.

 

[The Unforgiven]

Not always. Sometimes its just a returned MB.

My refurb just came today. Full retial box with all the goodies.

Yeah, I did forget about that. It'd be nice to get one that someone screwed up and just bought a motherboard that they didn't need, or couldn't use.

Well I'm pretty much decided on all of my stuff... Just gotta wait on Newegg to get the Fortron Blue Storm 500w back in stock. The 875P-T does use the 24 pin PSU connection, right? Not that it's a big deal, because the PSU has a 20 pin adapter with it.

 

[Wicked Klown]

If your looking in to a 865PE, you might want to look in to a Abit AS8. Had mine for about 3 months now and love it. Only prob I had was the Vcore would droop but a very easy dropp mod fixed that.

 

[NewbiePerson]

I picked up an asus p5gd1 for $68 from refurbs. Works great. No errors on prime after 3+ hours. The only problem I had is that it seems like one of the eide controllers isn't working right. But I have an ide to sata adapter so no worries there. Anywho, its a real bargain. Refurbs pwn.
Mobo refurbed - $68 refurb
CPU celeron - $80 oc'd to 3.5ghz rock solid
GPU 6600 - $85 refurb
Chieftec case - $20 tiger direct deal
HDD - $50 after MIR
PSU - $40
DVD-RW - B-Day pres
1GB ddr geil - $120 dual channel
I get a little over 7400 in 3dmark 03 and 3169 in 05.
My whole system costs about what an 6800 ultra would run. Except for my 19 inch LCD 16ms (essentially $200 but free at the same time long story) that throws it over $500 and wireless mouse and keyboard.
I live by refurbs and rebates.

 

[Dcasole]

The Unforgiven

And hell, anything's got to better than this stupid MSI mobo...

Just a quick question , what makes you think it is the motherboard holding you back ? Have you tried your chip in another board to see if it will run stable at a higher FSB ?

1 Gig of ram can stress the northbridge on 865 chipsets which can seriously affect your overclocking ablity especially if you are running 4 X 256 sticks instead of 2 X 512

My 865 Neo 2 and 2.8e is stable to 3.61 . I am sure I can push it higher but my power supply is marginal at best for a prescott and I am also using air for cooling so I lowered my VCORE and backed off the FSB to 3.59.

MSI boards are sometimes a chalange to get to run stable if you don't know all the tricks ( ask me I know) but once they are set up they run very stable and post some nice overclocks.

Here is just one ,It is much better if you lock the PCI bus to 66/33 by activating the SATA ports and the system is much more stable ( even if you are not running SATA) . The lowest you can go without the the SATA port activated is 67/34 and I am not really sure it is really locked down as they system is not as stable ( Mine and many others have reported the same issue)

Send me a PM if you are interested to try a few tricks and maybe squeeze a few more MZH out of that 2.4

Let me know if I can help

Thanks
Dave

 

[The Unforgiven]

Well I finally decided on an AS8 and all the stuff in my sig under "The Beast 2.0".

When I get it all, which should be about March 30th, I'll be sure to post a nice full report with pics. The biggest fear I have is the VDroop Mod. I dunno how good I am with a soldering iron. Probally could get pops to do it, he's good with it, and uses it fairly often.

Well thanks for the input everyone!

 

[Shadowknight]

so is it the lanparty 875p-t? i wonder this because i am building new comp soon also with the same processor as the unforgiven is.

Shadowknight~

 

[The Unforgiven]

so is it the lanparty 875p-t? i wonder this because i am building new comp soon also with the same processor as the unforgiven is.

Shadowknight~

That would be the DFI motherboard for LGA775 processors. Biggest reason I didn't buy it was price. Which other than VCore droopage, this Abit AS8 is a really good board... Though I got one with bent CMOS pins, and the jumper fell off and I thought I screwed my system over. And I think Sent is right about RAM slots one and three being dead. I used considerably more voltage than I am using now, and couldn't get this thing to reboot to save my life, changed the RAM to two and four, and have been running this same speed for about 4 days at 1.4875v which droops to 1.41v. But I don't think you could really go wrong with either board.

 

[Kunaak]

avoid 915 boards at all costs.
they feature the 10% OC lock.
some companies have managed to bypass the OC lock alittle, and get up near 20%, but that still sucks.

that means if you had a 2.8, the best you can hope for is just under 3.3 ghz, before the board starts acting nuts, and giving you throttling issues and crazy bandwidth.

avoid the headaches at all costs.
get 865, 875, or 925X-XE only.

avoid the early 925 non X or XE boards, and avoid the 915 boards, forever...