Best A64 + Mobo combo deal??

[ScottFern]

I am thinking of upgrading to a Athlon64 cpu + mobo. What is the sweet spot for OCing and price? Kind of like the 2.6C P4 OC'd to 3.2. I heard the MSI Neo Platinum Mobo is one of the best? Is this the best mobo for OCing? I also heard the stock cooler for the A64 is pretty good? Or is the new Zalman 7000 a noticeable difference?

I will be putting Kingston HyperX 2X512MB PC4000 ram into this machine. Will this memory cause any issues?

Thanks in advance guys.

Andrew

 

[CheesePoofs]

1) The sweet spot for OCing is either the s939 3000+ or 3200+. Both are 90nm cores, and should overclock very well.

2) MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum is one of the best mobo for an agp socket 939 athlon 64, and is the best for OCing in that category.

3) Stock cooler is fine for the A64's, they don't run hot.

4) The zalaman 7000 will cool slightly better, but it will also be almost silent.

5) That memory shouldn't cause any issues .... check MSI's website and find the ram compatability chart for the MSI K8N Neo 2 to be sure.

 

[ts3433]

If you get a Zalman 7000 or 7700, make sure you get the AlCu version--the all-copper ones are very heavy and put quite a bit of stress on the motherboard. Stock cooling should be sufficient for all but the heaviest overclocks, though, if you don't mind noise.

The MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum is a good overclocking motherboard, as are the Epox EP-9NDA3+ and EP-9NDA3J. I've also seen success with VIA-based boards like the Asus A8V Deluxe, but NVidia chipsets seem to be preferred.

 

[ScottFern]

Another question, what chipset performs the best with A64?

 

[ts3433]

There's virtually no performance difference between chipsets on the A64 because the memory controller is on the CPU. NVidia's chipsets seem to be somewhat preferred over VIA's, though.

 

[ScottFern]

cool. I heard there was concern about the Neo2 having only pci frequency lock on the first 2 sata ports.....so if you want more than that you pretty much can't OC because it can cause corruption on the other 2 ports? Or was this fixed in the second revision?

 

[ScottFern]

Originally posted by: ts3433
There's virtually no performance difference between chipsets on the A64 because the memory controller is on the CPU. NVidia's chipsets seem to be somewhat preferred over VIA's, though.

Better question. Is it worth the wait for nForce4 ?

 

[CheesePoofs]

On the neo2, as long as you plug your sata drive into slots 3 or 4 you can OC fine, they are locked.

Its only worth the wait for nForce4 if you want to be able to upgrade your graphics card to a high end one in a year or more, or if you want to have the features it has that nforce3 doesn't. Mostly, nForce4 is just an updated nForce3 with pcie support.