Motherboard Choice for Overclocking ??

[Guest]

I currently own a ECS K7S5A Motherboard, and an Athlon 1.4 Processor unlocked. I bought the board because of its price, but now I want to be able to overclock my system and the ECS line dosent offer any way of doing it other than modified bios (scary) or softFBS/ CPUFBS. I currently use SDRAM and really would rather not upgrade to DDR unless I absolutely have to($$$). My question is, which motherboard is the best for the $ and very overclockable using standard fan and heatsink ( I dont want to go with an elaborate water cooled system). I was looking at the new MSI board KT3 Ultra (MS-6380E v1.0) , but Im not sure how overclockable it. It also used DDR 333, which is nice, but more expensive. It also has the ability to take the FSB to 160mhz. I know MSI boards come w/ fuzzy bios, but I have heard thats crap. Please let me know your opinons on this matter and why. I want to be able to overclock the hell out of my processor !!

 

[phsstpok]

Make the jump to DDR. You'll be happy you did.

I made the mistake of sticking with SDRAM when I wanted to give my old motherboard to my nephew. I had some PC150 memory so I bought another SDRAM board. It's the Epox 8KTA3PRO (the +PRO is RAID) and it's great for overclocking. It has AGP voltage adjustment to 1.9 volts, I/O voltage to 3.75 volts, and the best is core voltage which goes to 2.25 volts. Core voltage has the usual 0.025 adjustments in BIOS but the motherboard has jumpers to modify this by +0.1, +0.2, +0.3, and +0.4 volt.

That's all well and good but now I'm locked in with an even larger investment in old technology. Low bandwidth SDRAM really handicaps fast processors.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b>

 

[Guest]

Ok, I will definitly go DDR, but which Manufaturer and board would be the best buy and the greatest to overclock while using just a fan and heatsink?
I read about people overclocking their rigs up to 300mhz over w/o any real special cooling. Just case fans and heatsink/fan.

 

[phsstpok]

300 Mhz? Do you mean 150*2? I think the Abit KR7A can do over 170mhz (340 DDR). That's one of the better KT266A motherboards. KT333 may be better if you want that kind of bus speed without overclocking PCI and AGP but then maybe it's already fixed in KT266A (I can't remember).

I'm waiting to see how the second generation of nForce turns out but first I want a new video card.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b>

 

[Guest]

No, I mean the processor was oc up/over 300mhz, not the RAM. The boards that I am looking at are:

Soltek SL-75DRV5

Epox EP-8K3A+

MSI KT3 Ultra (MS-6380E v1.0)

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP

Asus A7V333

 

[Speedfreak]

It's worth having a serious look at the Asus A7V333.

I have the RAID version and it is sweet. Check out some of the web reviews on it.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I accidentally blow your head off.......again?

 

[AMD_Man]

Hmm, the EPoX 8K3A+ is the best overclocker in that bunch.

<b><i>"A penny saved is a penny earned!"</i></b>

 

[Guest]

You use this board? If so what can you oc your proc to stable w/o using any special cooling methods ?

 

[Guest]

Indeed it is

I just purchased that mobo, and I can now overclock my XP 1900+ based system up to 1825 Mhz ( 2200+ ) utilizing a Vcore of 2v and a FSB of 151 Mhz. Of course, running Vcool in the background helps to facilitate stability at those speeds, along with a BIOS that has a 1/5 divider.

 

[Crashman]

You wouldn't see a huge performance increase by using a new motherboard, save your money and use that scary modified BIOS and some DDR333, you'll see significant overclockability as long as your CPU and power supply can handle it.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?