What is the fastest/best overclocking Socket A processor

[Enablingwolf]

Gigabytes are stable boards and an easy pick if the layout suites you. Most of the DFI are good pick boards too. You can do well with any board that the layout suites you and has the nF3 on it. AFIAK all the Gigabyte and DFI nVidia boards lock the PCI. Actually most of the 754 lock or should lock by now. Some still are just poopie and never will be good stable boards that will last long periods of time. The avantage of a mature socket is all the reviews out. Get past the fluff and look for data. You can easily find a solid board that will suite you.

If you happen across a board you like the look and layout of. Regardles of chipset. Do a search to see if the PCI locks or not. Some of them didn't. Though by the time it got to be really mature. Most of the 754 locked the PCI. Just about all the nF3 did. In google: <board chipset> PCI lock. For example..
SiS 755A, produced it has a working lock, but some baords offer no voltage controls.



Then once you find out if it has the beginnings of suiting you. Hit the manufactures site and see if the site is good and you like how everything works out there. Using the support site is kind of important to me. Since if your in a pickle, your going to be relying on it for help and resolution. Also research how good the support is. Which is about googling and reading user reports on the board and issues they may of faced.

There was a ASUS board that did well too, but I do not recall what it was. I knew they did have some quirky BIOS though. It has been a long time and my memory has faded a bit.

Pretty much just try and find a board with a nF3 chicpset. The 250 was an alright chipset. Though it was a quirky thing on some brands. Nothing totally major though. Most of the issues with the 754 should of been adressed ages ago. So if there is still issues, avoid that product. If it hasn't bee nfixed by now. It never will be. Look for high DOA too if buying a new board.

As for post count...

If you stick around asking honest questions and helping others with issue you might know the answers to. It goes pretty fast. In a way it is rewarding sharing information with others.

It might be beyond your price range...

It is a alright entry level into socket 939 and will hold your AGP ATi card. (quirky board, but a good one.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157097

Coupled with a Dual core 939 and your ready to roll. Though you will have to have matching sticks of RAM to use the Dual Channel memory controller.

 

[benbaked]

I didn't read all of the posts, but I still think you are better off with a Socket 939 as opposed to a Socket 754 system.

Socket 754 = single channel memory only. Big turn off for me, especially since the A64's big feature is the on-die memory controller. Memory bandwidth might not matter except in benchmarks, but still, I don't see any legitimate reason that anybody should go with Socket 754 at this point in time. It's even more dead then Socket 939, and almost as dead as Socket A.

I personally would go with a Socket 939 motherboard.

If you really want a nForce-based motherboard with AGP in the Socket 939 format Biostar made one that had exactly that, as well as PCI-E. The AGP slot is a fake slot and thus only runs at 4x, that is of course the downside, but that's where that Asrock board comes in with working PCI-E and a fully working AGP8x slot. At the time the board was out the AMD motherboard subforums here were overflowing with posts and threads of people getting good overclocks out of their A64s/Opterons with that Asrock DualSATAII.

 

[Nealoc187]

I read about some issues with the AGP in that ASRock board needing some fiddling to make it work correctly, anyone know if they ended up fixing that in later releases of the board?

http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/30/5271.html

On a moderate overclock (easily attainable level without tons of experience, being as I am an overclocking n00b) which setup do you think would yeild more processing power for gaming in existing games (not upcoming games that may take advantage of dual core)? An A64 S939 on the ASRock board, or an A64 S754 on one of the quality S754 boards like the DFI, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.

EDIT: I just looked up prices on S939 processors and the Opterons and X2s are priced quite a bit higher than I am willing to spend, so that limits me to A64 no matter which socket I decide to go with. Now just have to decide on the socket...

My reason for this whole quest is that my current setup is CPU limited in Microsoft Flight Sim 2004 (not the brand new one), I've got tons of mods to that game and they have really slowed my performance down to a crawl (back when the game was unmodded it ran smooth as silk).