Overclocking via bus ratio changes vs. FSB changes

[igxqrrl]

I recently came upon an unlocked Northwood chip, and am looking to build a system
around it. I'm not interested in heavily overclocking the part, but I want to go as far
as I can while maintaining stability and keeping the system relatively quiet.

My question is which approach would be better:

1) Getting a nice solid Intel 845D board, and upping the bus ratio (which should be
possible, because the part is not ratio locked)

2) Getting a Gigabyte SIS 645DX board, and playing with the FSB frequency

Is there any guideline about which of these will give me better total performance?

Thanks!

 

[Jeff7]

Get the Gigabyte board and try changing both the multipler and FSB.

 

[ZimZum]

how did you manage to "come upon" an unlocked nothwood ?
Increasing the FSB and not simply changing the multiplier will yield better performance

 

[igxqrrl]

Thanks both of you for the suggestions..

My employer has a surplus of unlocked parts, and is providing them to
some employees as a "Thank You" of sorts. Cheaper for them than a
Christmas bonus, I suppose.

So basically my best bet is to find good quality memory, up the FSB as
much as possible, and when that starts causing problems then start
upping the multiplier? The part is binned at 2.4, so it should be
reasonably overclockable.

Does anyone have any experience with stability with the SIS645DX? A
couple websites had less than favorable reviews of the chipset, saying
that a large percentage of the mainboards they received for review
were flaky..

Thanks!

 

[Dre]

I'd put that sucker in a asus p4b266-c

 

[igxqrrl]

<< I'd put that sucker in a asus p4b266-c >>



OK, I'm intrigued, why the Asus? The Gigabyte seemed to get top honors
here, at Toms, and a couple other places.. Anything particularly cool about
the Asus?

Thanks!