What Motherboard should I get??

[vhc-minotaur]

I just recently purchased my P4 1.6A and I would like to here from people that clock with this chip. I'm currently debating the following motherboads.

1. Soyo P4 Fire Dragon

2. Gigabyte GA-8IRXP P4 Titan

3. MSI 845 Ultra ARU

4. Asus P4B266

Please give me your feedback on which one you think is best and why.

Thanks

Mino

 

[zervun]

Scratch all of those and get an Epox 4BDA, 4BDA2+ or 4SDA. Why people keep leaving these out is amazing, they are the best boards on the market right now for overclocking and features. Do a search through the different forums on those and you will find nothing but shinning compliments of them. To be honest it pains me to see people suggesting other boards when these are so fantastic. I spent a long time trying to find the "best board" and the only board which didn't have a negative post about it was the 4BDA variety. Just by process of elimination I got this board. I have it now and would go to my grave before I gave it up.

 

[zervun]

oh yea btw posts that I have found problems with each of the following and don't flame me on this, I'm not 100% on any of this except my own board, this is just what I can remember, if you have stuff to add, please add it nicely I'm not saying I have a phtographic memory.

1. Soyo P4 Fire Dragon
Has major problems going over a certain FSB in fact I've found tons of posts on this probably one of the best non overclocker boards though do to great onboard sound and other features

2. Gigabyte GA-8IRXP P4 Titan
Had coldboot problems because of initial voltage? Giga says that they don't support overclockers. Bios fix supposidly out now for it. Out of all these 4 this is probably the best one, I don't know status on the initial voltage problem but the fact that Giga has openenly said they don't cater to overclockers sucks. Otherwise I've heard this is a great board rivaling the epox's

3. MSI 845 Ultra ARU
Seems to be a pretty stable board, but i have 1 friend who had a DOA, and I've heard of others. IMO MSI is a gamble they seem to have alot of dead boards, although this is one of their best. I've read a few places about problems overclocking though. This one is primarily IMO that I don't like MSI because of their track record and my friend got a dead board.

4. Asus P4B266
Have found tons of posts on problems going over a certain FSB because of divider setting problems or something. I usually just pass these buy there seems to be quite a few problems with the board. It has the best memory performance of all the boards though if I remember correctly. Most do some great overclocking on it though. Seems to be one of the better boards


*****************

Epox 4BDA, 4BDA2+

More overclocking, voltage adjustments than nearly any other board out there except maybe the Giga and then I think they are about the same. Rock hard stability everyone I have heard of has easily hit 2.2+ghz if they try and have decent ram. Not a single complaint that I have found period except for the fact that voltage numbers are off a little but it's only minor. The enermax problem was just rumor, a couple enermax users have popped up and said it works perfect with the 4BDA. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this board, it is very very well made and everyone who ownes one loves it. The bottom line is if you want the best, this is the best for stability/performance all in one package and guarenteed phat overclocks.

 

[Aintslgaengrr]

how are the ram timing options on the 4bda2+ on the 4sda+ they seem not to be such good

 

[Enigma422]

I wouldn't get any of those boards. DDR memory only slows down your P4 because it creates a bottleneck in the memory bus when you take the P4 above 2.4GHz and wont be able to feed the 512KB of L2 cache that the NWs have. If you plan on keeping your CPU at 1.6GHz, then get the Epox board as so many people have suggested, but if you want all out P4 performance, RDRAM is the only way to go. Sure you may not get the highest clock speed out of your CPU, but your overall system performance will negate and and surpass any increased performance you may get from a higher clock speed with a DDR platform. I suggest getting an Abit TH7II board with Samsung Original double sided RDRAM.

 

[Vfrjim1]

I run the P4B266 with the 1006.001 beta bios, the only problem with this board is the 3:4 multiplier goes to 1:1 at 133+, there is no way of forcing it to 3:4 unless someone writes another beta bios, but other then that, this board is the best, I had the Gigabyte(good riddens!) nothing, I mean nothing over 124fsb for me, maybe there is a beta bios out to fix that now, but it wasn't out when I had the board 1+ months ago.

Jim

 

[zervun]

how are the ram timing options on the 4bda2+ on the 4sda+ they seem not to be such good

not sure what you mean by this, I have my samsung pc2700 runing on turbo settings cas 2.5 at 200mhz, you can adjust the setting individually also.

 

[zervun]

I wouldn't get any of those boards. DDR memory only slows down your P4 because it creates a bottleneck in the memory bus when you take the P4 above 2.4GHz and wont be able to feed the 512KB of L2 cache that the NWs have. If you plan on keeping your CPU at 1.6GHz, then get the Epox board as so many people have suggested, but if you want all out P4 performance, RDRAM is the only way to go. Sure you may not get the highest clock speed out of your CPU, but your overall system performance will negate and and surpass any increased performance you may get from a higher clock speed with a DDR platform. I suggest getting an Abit TH7II board with Samsung Original double sided RDRAM.

Well, my ddr does just fine at 2.4ghz, I'll post some memory benchmarks later. It may not have quite the edge that rambus has, but it works great. Alot of rambus people have problems overclocking, but when they do it's great, with the ddr and epox there are no problems at all you don't have to worry about it.

 

[Aintslgaengrr]

for the 8irxp:
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72565

and if this shouldn't help you still can trick the mobo to get a higher Vcore then the prob should be away also.

so when there is no reboot issue anymore wich would be the best board? still the epox?

the issue is, i found a cheap distributor (here in Germany) but he hasn't the epox board (don't know y everyone sells this...)

 

[zervun]

well if you can't go with the epox go with the giga, the only thing is I'm not sure if you can lock the bus on the giga.

 

[Aintslgaengrr]

i've phoned the distributor so they call me back tomorrow morning (GMT +1 )
i think i can get it there but the question is is it really better!

just take a look at cpu database at overclockers.com the epox boards were really slower than the GAs

 

[zervun]

well if you scan through the forums, the epox's get the #1 raves of all the boards and people have amazing overclocks - there is a guy doing 2.8 with a 1.6 on an epox. I'm stuck at 2.4 because I don't want to go about 51c until I get my watercooling. I didn't even post my on the database because I heard it wasn't working. If you get this board you won't be dissapointed, the only reason not to get this board was if you are going DDR. It's the best of the p4 ddr boards in alot of people's opinions, it doesn't really have any downside to it.

 

[Aintslgaengrr]

if you think of the guy with aircooling - he also uses 8irxp
i've never seen overclock obove 2400 on this board with the 4sda(+) great oc only with the gigabyte

if i'm wrong please give me a link

 

[Konowl]

Why people keep leaving these out is amazing.

I can enlighten you...

Because they are a pain in the *** to find, at least local to me.

 

[TASOS]

I have been searching hard for a month now.....just to find the best mobo for my upcoming Northwood new system.

Reading reviews,asking users,asking tech's.........

RESULT:
******** EPOX 4SDA+ *********

1)The most stable mobo for o\c
2)Many tweaking option...that really work
3)Considerably cheap
4)More powerfull now with the new bios
that offers more memory tweakings

Thats my opinion

 

[Aintslgaengrr]

i've just ordered:

prices in Euro !

Pos Art-Nr. Beschreibung Stk. E-Preis G-Preis
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 0007581 EPOX EP-4SDA+, Sockel 478, ATX 1 133,00 133,00
2 0007107 IP IV 1600MHz, 478pin, 512kB, BOX 1 189,38 189,38
3 0500096 Wärmeleitpaste Arctic Silver III, 3g 1 12,00 12,00
4 0007403 DDR-RAM 512MB, PC333 CL2.5 Samsung 1 215,00 215,00
5 0002778 Netzteil ATX Enermax EG365AX-VE 350W 1 69,90 69,90
6 0003479 Lüfter 60x60x25 YS-Tech 36dBa 2 8,90 17,80
7 0003504 Lüfter 92x92x25 YS-Tech 32.0dBa 1 13,00 13,00
8 0006373 80,0 GB Maxtor 4D080H4 1 137,08 137,08

 

[Konowl]

I live in Ottawa and couldn't find any Epox boards locally at all. Looked at some other Canadian PC sites, natta.