Question about Intel 845 DDR boards

[EtOH]

As I am sure alot of you guys have been thinking I am looking at the 1.6A and 1.8A P4s. I am getting a little tired of Via issues on my Athlon and think that if the 1.6/1.8 overclock well it would be worth a move at this point.

1.6A = $156
1.8A = $213

The 1.6 looks good and if you can get away with 16x133 then you are looking at 2.13 and that is fairly quick. The question though is do any of the Intel 845 DDR boards have the necessary 1/4 PCI divider? Specifically the Soyo, Abit, or Asus boards. I am ruling out Via boards at this point because that is the only reason to ditch an AMD setup, and quite frankly I have dealt with enough junk with the name SiS on it in the past to not trust them very far.

So the general questions are:

Any i845 DDR boards with 1/4 PCI divider?
What do you guys think the chances of 2.13 (16 x 133) or 2.4 (18 x 133) are realisticlly?

EtOH

 

[AndyHui]

Yes, they do have the 1/4 PCI divider. In fact, a lot of the i845 boards have an FSB that is no longer linked to the PCI speed.

 

[RalfHutter]

Andy - Can you elaborate on this please?

 

[JOSEPHLB]

What Andy means.. is alot of the new 845 DDR boards, have a PCI Lock feature..

you can set your PCI bus to 33Mhz, no matter what FSB you are running at

 

[Athlon4all]

Right JOSEPHLB's got it. PCI locking means that even if the fsb is at 250MHz, the PCI bus will still be at 33MHz.

 

[DashK]

Does anyone know what P4 DDR boards have this lock feature?

 

[AndyHui]

IIRC, both the Abit TH7 and ASUS P4B266 have the ability to hold the PCI at 33MHz.

 

[Rebels7]

Andy, will the Asus P4S333 also do this, I have one on order now and would like to know if it has this feature. TIA.

 

[JOSEPHLB]

the Asus P4S333 does not have this feature.

I have this board, and now my secondary ide port has fubar'd RMA time..

Looks like a perfect excuse to go ahead and grab the P4B266-C

 

[Athlon4all]

<< IIRC, both the Abit TH7 and ASUS P4B266 have the ability to hold the PCI at 33MHz. >>

That's the first I heard of it for the P4B266, but when you say TH7, don't u mean BD7? And keep in mind that even with the PCI locking, the BD7 does not oc better than P4B266.

 

[StanFL]

I just installed a Gigabyte GA-8IRXP 845 board last night and it also has options to keep the PCI/AGP speeds in spec while overclocking. I have not attempted o/c'ing yet though, just getting going with the board but it is also VERY sweet so far.

 

[subhuman]

Anyone with ASUS P4B266 notice a 'lock PCI to 33mhz' or similiar feature?