81EXP or P4s533 for overclocking

[jkresh]

I will be making my final upgrade purchases for college this week, I am probably going with a directron SF-201AS (or AB) case, a p4 1.8, and either corsair or Samsung ddr, I want to take the 1.8 to at least 2.4 but may stretch it to see how far it can go (probably will run at 2.4 most of the time), I wanted a sis648 based motherboard but as asus has said it may not be till the last week in august that?s not happening, so my two top contenders right now are the p4s433 from asus and the 81exp from gigabyte, I like the gigabyte because of raid, usb 2.0, and firewire (don?t need raid but want the rest), I know it can overclock well but how does it compare to the asus, also since it is an i845e board it has no official support for pc2700 let alone pc3200, while the asus has at the least unofficial support for pc3200, I have heard that their are problems running high memory speeds on the 81EXP, and i dont want to pay for ddr400 and then run it at 140mhz or less, thanks.

 

[jkresh]

someone must have an 81EXP, and ddr400, I know someone posted in the post about the i845g review, and I know that the motherboard one the gold editors choice award as a i845e board, but I still wonder how it compares to a sis645dx board, especially where memory is concerned.

 

[Jola]

I have just returned an 8IEXP as it is an overclocking disaster.

The problem is with the memory speed on this motherboard. You cannot really run memory at over 140 MHz DDR (280 MHz), as there seems to be a timing problem at higher speeds than this.

So, the CPU overclocks fine, I can run FSB = 140 (ie 1.8A at 2.52GHz). Now this is great - but I then have to run the memory at 1:1. If you clock the CPU well down, you can run the memory at 3:4.

Now I use Corsair XMS3000C2, so this is not the problem. And other users of the 8IEXP have reported similar findings.

DON'T BUY THE GIGABYTE BOARDS FOR OVERCLOCKING!!!

And if you don't want to overclock rather get an Intel D845EBT - it is better, cheaper, and has the same features.

I am getting an ASUS P4B533-V as a replacement.