The best overclocking P4 478 Motherboard?

[Philippine Mango]

Taking PCIe, AMD64, and other 'logic' out of the equation, what is the best overclocking P4 Socket 478 875P based motherboard? I currently have an IC7-G and the problems it's been exhibiting when overclocking have been similar to what has been posted on forums. I've tried my best to look for info pertaining to this but I keep getting mixed results.

To me, it's either the IC7-G/Max3 or the series of ASUS boards which I can't even list since I don't either know them all and or theres too many of them.

Ones I know are P4P800, P4P800-Deluxe, P4C800, P4C800-Deluxe and probably a bunch of other ones.

Issues with the IC7-G being that the sound has issues like with static onboard sound, picky about certain memory dimms, some wierd memory issue with it not going past 255FSB, and using a 5/4 divider can have issues as well, temperature probe is inaccurate, SATA issues, some other misc. overclocking related issues...

I don't know which these issues pertain to which ASUS board but some I've heard that when the load increase, voltages drop, running hotter, incorrect temp readings as well, and some otherones I can't remember.

So, what would I choose if I needed to get a board. Remember, taking logic out of the equation with such things as 'waste of money etc..' are unwanted, I just want facts and experiences, thanks.

If possible, list all the ASUS P4 478 875P motherboards and which one is the best, maybe I'll put this into a poll. I'd like to keep this thread running as long as possible to get a good general feel of which board(s) are better since not only they're out of production but that also means any revisions that could have/would have been done have been done.

Also FYI, I purchased my board in mid '04 so it should have had all it's issues fixed.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

We're going back to 2003 technology here. Even so, my "MOJO" has been running pretty darn well since summer, '04.

MOJO was a response to a friend who hot-dogged his way on the DYI bandwagon. He did some decent research, and bought a Canterwood-chipset based (i875) ASUS P4C800-E.

Some forum posters, and my friend, were disappointed with how the P4C800 OC'd. Other reviews I've read suggest that it OC's pretty well. At the time when my friend bought his, it cost about $200, while the ASUS P4P800 (standard) or P4P800 SE retailed for around $135. The P4P800 uses a Springdale i865PE chipset. It substitutes some ASUS features for an Intel automatic overclocking capability, but I can't see where that's a loss in much of anything. The P4P800 boards may have less in the way of the industrial strength of its voltage regulation -- a speculation voiced by my NOOB friend, but mostly the difference in price can be attributed to the P4C800's extra Promise RAID controller in addition to the ICH5R.

The P4P800 SE revision 2 was retailing for just above $90 a couple months ago. It, and the P4C800 -- include a feature called "ASUS Lock-Free," enabling users to unlock a loose-jointed internal CPU multiplier that is otherwise locked to one value except when a thermal limit is reached -- triggering the CPU to throttle down. My friend since built another system based on the P4P800-E Dee-lucks, which only differs from the SE version in a spare PRomise controller. He's happier'n-a-pig-in-poop with it.

We both put some MicroCool sinks on the Mosfets and PLL chips, and with a heatsink solution like the ThermalRight SI-120 heatpipe cooler, I had been able to OC my first P4P800 (standard) with a Northwood 3.0C to 3.6Ghz using OCZ DDR500 modules -- set to 480. I am stubborn as a jackass about keeping my VCORE voltage down near Intel's official limit. The Northwood is currently set at 1.525V, nevertheless, and has been running stably for two years 24/7. I gave it to my brother for Xmas, and built another system based on the Prescott 3.2E (initially) and an SE mobo revision. With that system, I dropped the multiplier from 16 to 14, bumped up the FSB to 1,000 Mhz for the memory running at its full DDR500 spec. This meant the processor was running at an even 3.5 Ghz.

It was a dream system for my purposes -- running 24/7 through about six or seven months. Then, the memory controller began to go south. I replaced the P4P800 SE with another one. For that, I found an OEM Prescott 3.4E, replaced the memory with some OCZ DDR400 Platinum (2,3,2,5), boosted the FSB by a measly 9% so the processor ran at 3.7 Ghz and the memory at about DDR433. Performance was actually better than I'd achieved with the DDR500 modules.

Given the experience with my brother's system, for sheer "gigahertz," the Northwood is the better processor for the P4P800 SE, but I still think I've got overall better performance with the 3.4E, P4P800 SE, and the Platinum memories. You're better with tighter latencies and more modest over-clocking than you are with looser latencies and pushing the FSB to the limit.

I could probably push the 3.4E to 4.0. That would be less than a 20% OC. I'd have to bump up the VDIMM to about 2.75V from its current setting of 2.65V -- near-minimum for those modules. 2.75 is within OCZ warranty for the Platinums.

I just feel comfortable with these settings at this moment, and I have to rely on this machine more -- once I got comfortable with the stability I'd achieved with the 3.2E and P4P800 SE.

Incidentally -- the P4P800 SE -- for some reason, may reduce a little of the heat dissipation problem. At the moment, no matter what I do with the system with 3.4E@3.7, and using the TR-SI-120 cooler and an HR-05 chipset cooler, the CPU temperature (at 75F room ambient) -- only varies between an idle of around 98F and a load of 108F. That's a practical load temperature of about 42C. Who said the Prescott was a "toaster-oven?"

 

[o1die]

I don't recommend the 875 chipset for it's price premium. I was able to overclock my 2.8c to 3500 on an msi 865pe board simply by raising the cpu fsb to 250. It would run for a few minutes at 3.7, but wasn't stable enough. If you can find one (Msi 865pe Neo 2 LS), the board has a host of overclocking settings in the bios. It was originally less than $100.

 

[Philippine Mango]

bump

 

[VinDSL]

Gotta go with BonzaiDuck on this one!

The ASUS P4P800-SE & ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe are the best P4 478 overclocking boards out there. They're simple excellent!

You'll probably pay about 130 bones for the 'Deluxe' and 100 bones for the 'SE'.

Personally, I'd go the 'Deluxe' route!