ASUS motherboards and OC'ing

[ShakyJake]

I have yet to find a reason or solution for this continuing problem I have had with ASUS motherboards and overclocking.

Let me give a brief history of experiences with their motherboards:

About 3 years I found a gem of a P4. It was a 2.0 GHz model that overclocked to 3.33 GHz and was rock solid. At the time I was using this on an ABIT IS7 motherboard. Overclocking options were FSB set to 166 and N/B Strap set to 667. Was using PC2700 memory and memory timings were 1:1.

At some point I wanted to switch to an ASUS P4P800 motherboard. Using the same chip and same FSB timings the damn board wouldn't even POST. Now this is the same processor, RAM, video, etc. and it was a no go. Tried a different P4P800 and same result -- I gave up, stuck to the IS7.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago I upgraded to a Pentium D 930 and an ABIT AW8 motherboard. Overclocked the 930 to 4GHz (266 FSB, N/B Strap of 1066, 533Mhz DDR, 1:1 memory ratio). Later on I wanted to switch to a 965 based board. I picked up the ASUS P5B-E and using the same Pentium D, memory, video, etc. etc. WOULD NOT POST at 4GHz. EXACTLY the same results as that P4P800 board years ago.

So what's the deal? I feel like I'm somehow doing something wrong. People rave about how well these ASUS boards overclock, yet I have had zero luck on the two occasions I've tried. The bottom line is that I KNOW the processor can overclock -- both times it had been doing so for months. Yet the ASUS board with the same timings can't do it. The only difference I noticed between ASUS and ABIT boards is in their BIOS ABIT will have the N/B Strap option where ASUS has nothing like that.

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

 

[Regalk]

Could it be you are starting out with too high of an overclock. Asus boards has much tighter/optimized timings that ABIT or DFI. So what you achieve on ABIT may be a lot more than on ASUS.
On my A8NE i was only able to get 2727 from my Opty 144. On my DFI LANparty I get 2970 - big difference.
I also have the P4P800 and a NW2.4 - stable at 3.2 - higher than 3.4 RAM and cpu starts to go nuts - good board though. The IS7 and IC7 were much better not sure why you went to Asus.
P965 boards - I use the P5Bdeluxe WiFi and really get a good o/c out oof it but I have been hearing good things about the Abit AWDmax - again why switch??.
I wouldn't unless if you feel like testing various boards for fun like me and ending up with a $hit load of MBs and parts

 

[MegaWorks]

I know I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but ASUS is crap when it comes to overclocking. The only good overclocking Asus boards are the Repulic of gamers edition which they charge Premium and some Deluxe models.

If you want a good overclocking board get The ABIT Quad GT it's a P965 chipset, don't worry about the bios I heard that ABIT fixed most of the glitches on this board.

 

[Ketchup]

Shakyjake and Megaworks, you are generalizing too much.

Abit used to have the best motherboards you could buy, then it looked like they might go under, now they are on their way back up.
Epox used to build great overclocking motherboards, now buying an Epox is a shot in the dark.
Gigabyte has been up, then down, now back up. Similar story with Asus.

It's always a good idea to consider everything available when going into a build, rather than assuming one brand will automatically give you a good/bad overclock.