Upgrading to E4300, need AGP and overclockability

[TiduZ]

Hey all, long time reader first time poster. I am looking to upgrade from a 3000+ xp @2.3Ghz to an E4300, and I don't have a lot of money to spend, so I need to use my Radeon x800xt AIW agp8x card. I am looking to overclock the E4300 as high as possible, but the only board I have been able to find that has AGP and supports the E4300 is the asrock, which in Anand's test resulted in only an 11% overclock of the 6600.

Is there any other option? I looked into a pci-e - agp converter (albatron atop) but it appears to only support Nvidia cards and also slows performance by up to 10%. Any expert opinions on the issue would be helpful. Also, if anyone would like to trade their pci-e card for my agp card, that'd be awesome

 

[Ichigo]

How about you read the actual thread on this motherboard, in which many reports suggest that reaching 3Ghz is very possible?

 

[etherdude]

I am running the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA with an AIW 8500 128MB (Old card!), 2 X 512mb Ballistix DDR3200 and an E4300 @ 2.66GHz (FSB = 294MHz). That is an overclock of almost 50%. I upgraded from an ASUS A7N8X with XP 3200+. The new machine (same memory and video) has a PCMark05 of over 4000 while my AMD was around 1550.

 

[Xvys]

Don't forget about the AsRock 775i65G. It is comparable in performance with the 775Dual-Vsta, but uses the Intel 865 chipset rather than the Via chipset found in the DV. I had one and it overclocks to 300FSB easily and is very stable...and cheap at $50. It uses AGP and DDR ram only. With the E4400 a 50% oc @ 300FSB would yield 3.0GHz. This is actually an ideal board for the 800FSB processors. The reviews have shown that DDR ram and AGP are just as fast as DDR2 and PCI-E at these speeds (ram at 3:2 divider = 200MHz).

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: etherdude
I am running the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA with an AIW 8500 128MB (Old card!), 2 X 512mb Ballistix DDR3200 and an E4300 @ 2.66GHz (FSB = 294MHz). That is an overclock of almost 50%. I upgraded from an ASUS A7N8X with XP 3200+. The new machine (same memory and video) has a PCMark05 of over 4000 while my AMD was around 1550.

It's nice to see that the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA overclocks nicely with the E4x00 series. I'm building a system for a family member based on my old 775Dual-VSTA and an E4300 or E4400.

Being able to use any ram and/or any videocard with the C2D is a really great thing. :thumbsup:

 

[TiduZ]

I have decided to go with the AsRock 775i65G. I am wondering however, how well should I be able to overclock with 2x1gb dual channel ddr400 OCZ platinum ram? I am a bit confused as to how the ram and fsb ratio works and if someone could explain to me that'd be great. I am a bit concerned because this ram will only overclock to around 240mhz from 200, so I am hoping that using a divider will help fix this, but as I said I don't fully understand this. Also, am I correct to say that the fastest possible overclock I could get at 300fsb would be 2.7ghz? (300x9).

Thanks a lot for the replies so far