Upgrading is so hard to do....THE CHOICES!

[chuta]

OK...Well...I seem to have narrowed my choices down to 3 MB's

EPoX 8K3A+
Asus A7v333
Asus A7N266-C

I would like to overclock my xp 1800 (eventually I would unlock it....). I know that the epox has an enormous OC potential (195mhz) but I truly fear bringing my pci clock too high (HD faliure becoming quite a possibilty). Thus my idea for the nforce 415-d (with the locked pci clock). I havent seen too many reviews about its OC ability so I figured Id inquire here (also the price is rather attractive). Last, the a7v333, is a great board...but it is a bit costly and the features wont really be used (firewire and usb 2.0).
My system will eventually will have

1800 xp
PC3000 OCZ 512mb
Radeon 8500(LE I believe) 128mb
Thermalright AX-7 with a good 80mm fan (panaflo seems to be the direction im going)
One of the 3 MB's....

So...thats that. Now...anyone have a similar setup or have any input about these MB's? Any help would be great! ok..HAve fun OCing!

chuta

current system

1ghz Tbird Oced to 1.13
256 crucial pc133 ram
Abit Kt7a-Raid
Xtasy Geforce 4 Ti 4600 (currently)
Quantam 30 gig
Maxtor 27 gig
WD 13 gig
Sblive 5.1
Realtek Lan card (2)
Plexwriter 12/10/32
SyncMaster 955 DF 19"
Win2k

 

[AkumaBao]

<< I know that the epox has an enormous OC potential (195mhz) >>



Iwill XP333. (233MHz) Just thought I'd add that.

 

[chuta]

right...but all the benchmarks for the Iwill 333 put it under a 266a by 10% at the same clock speed. Now....i may have read wrong...but why not get a board that cant OC as high..yet is as fast....

 

[CoDerEd]

I guess you will have problem with epox and gf4
it narrowed your selection to both asus.
I personally will choose ABIT KR7A133 or IWILL XP333

See this thread.

peace

 

[o1die]

Check newegg's refurbished section. They had the abit kr7a-133 for only $99 shipped (30 day warranty).

 

[ShinSa]

Not too sure about the EPoX 8K3A+, but 8KHA+ had its share of problems for anandtechers including myself.

Stick with ABIT or ASUS to avoid seeing that C1 LED errors and random reboots.

 

[chuta]

cool...thanks for the replies. Ill update when I finally get my board in.