Pentium 4 1.6A or 1.8A?

[sdausmus]

I have been looking at building an Intel system for a friend of mine, and liked the look of the ABIT BG7 motherboard with the Intel 845G chipset that apparently supports PC2700 DDR. From what I have read, its pretty simple to pop in a Northwood "A" chip and up the FSB to 133 to more or less turn it into a Northwood "B". For about $20-35 dollars more, is it worth going up to the 1.8A? Would I not have to deal with as many annoyances like modding the voltage, etc.? Also, is there a better motherboard with Intel's 845G DDR333 support, and should I look at VIA or SiS's solutions?

--Sean

 

[LED]

Should be able to run the 1.6A @133FSB w/o modding anything.

I sold my sig for $50.

 

[Crashman]

At 133FSB, the 1.6A does 2133MHz, while the 1.8A does 2400MHz.
ON the other hand, the 1.6A will usually do 240MHz at 150MHz FSB.
But at 150MHz you might have to drop your memory speed to 1:1 instead of 4:5, with a net loss of performance.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>