*BEST* mobo for o/c'ing 1.6A

[Clevor]

I have a P4T-E with ICS-13 chips so I can pretty much boot at 150 FSB at 4X RDRAM, but it won't post into Windows. Yes, the DDR boards will FSB better but the RDRAM boards hit humongous memory bandwidths without breathing hard, which the Northwood needs.

I do feel there is an instability problem with RDRAM, until official PC1066 or 1200 becomes available. In other words, I have a hard time getting 3DMark2001 to not lock up 10 out of 10 times I run it, even at 3X, no matter how far I drop the FSB (didn't try lower than 136/4X though). It doesn't seem to be really, truly stable (c'mon, admit it guys) over PC900, and I've tried 12 different sticks of RDRAM, both old and recent batches. But I insist on running 512 MB, no lower.

So far, I run either 138/4X (PC1106) or 144/3X (PC864). Either way, 3DMark2001 or 2000 locks up (or gets a corrupted file popup box) 1 out of 3 times I run it, but in actual 3D gaming, it rarely locks up so I say what the heck. 2D is rock solid, and no problems with bootup or shutdown.

At 144/3X I get Sandra memory scores of 3000/3000, and at 138/4X I get a whopping 3450/3450. DDR guys will have to try awful hard to top this. My 1.6a runs between 2.2 and 2.3 gig and gets an 11,500 3DMark2001 score and a 15,000 3DMark2000 score. I will be improving the cooling in my case and hopefully my lockup problem will go away. An overclocked Northwood and RDRAM, with a Ti 4600 card running 315/735 puts out an awful lot of heat in a localized area.

BTW, I got nothing against DDR. In fact, I just bought 512 MB Samsung PC2700 DDR333 for my XP. I may try it out on the Northwood if I can find a used P4B266 cheap here in Japan.

 

[QuestionsandAnsweres]

<< it's getting closer with ddr333 and ddr400 but it's still not rdram levels). If you got a 1.6A and just oc'ed fsb to 133 you will have better performance than a ddr board with a higher fsb and clock rate. >>



Umm. DDR 333 is overall about the same speed as PC800 RDRAM. Maybe tad slower. DDR 400 is faster the PC800 RDRAM.

and this summer sis is suppose to release a duel channel PC2700 chipset. And that will probably be the RDRAM killer (thats 5.4GBs) if it works right

 

[pinkorag]

Yes but oc the rdram to 1066 and it will perform better. DDR however is getting closer to 1066 rdram too. How neglible is the difference between ddr-333/400 and rdram at 1066?

Also I got a question on 850 boards. I know the Abit is great but who does Epox stand on the 850 boards? Is the EP-4T2A3 the same as the 4SDA+/4BDA+ in terms of features but for the 850 chipset?

 

[galas]

ardOCP has a very nice write-up on oc'ing the 1.6A with 8 different motherboards...you can find it HERE

.:galas:.

 

[ginfest]

<< It doesn't seem to be really, truly stable (c'mon, admit it guys) over PC900, and I've tried 12 different sticks of RDRAM, both old and recent batches. But I insist on running 512 MB, no lower. >>



Not sure about your setup, but I'm running a TH7-II with the ICS -03 DRCGs and 2-256MB Samsung DS/16-device at 4x133/PC 1066 and haven't had a crash since I set it up, over 1 month ago.
Prime 95 torture test for 24 hours, looped 3D Mark over and over, RAR/UnRAR hundreds of MBs at a time, and games like Jedi-Knight 2, Mohaa, NHL 2002, dungeon Siege, etc, etc.
I'm not saying all RDRam will do it, but there are people with stable setups "over PC900".
Sandra mem (FWIW) at 2.1G/PC 1066 3300/3300

Edit: the P4 1.6a is at 2.1G with stock(1.50) vcore which actually shows at 1.47 under load. Plenty of headroom in this chip, going higher when 2.1 starts seeming slow