what is the best motherboard for 1.1ghz oem thunderbird if I want to overclock?(need to order asap)

[damac]

I have decided I want to get faster than 900mhz with my first overclocking job(p3 700) I want to get a really fast chip and overclock a little bit and get the thunderbird oem 1.1ghz, but this will only be my second overclocking job. I obviously want a stable motherboard and something that will accept the cpu and let me overclock it a little. Im not obsessed with the best numbers but want to overclock a little with a regular heatsink/fan and just let it be for atleast a year.

So any ideas?

I have seen

EP-8KTA+
Asus A7V

So is their a clear cut answer here when not taking into account pricing? Stability and tools to overclock are my concerns, IF its even possible to overclock the 1.1 ghz or if its better to get a smaller cpu and overclock it to 1.1 ghz I don't know?

thanks for the help. Whatever people to say to buy is what I'll buy(any good links to get them would also be great)

 

[Henry Kuo]

read my review. The MSI K7T Pro2 is the most stable KT133 with multiplier settings.

 

[TheNeck]

I recommend the Abit KT7

 

[Nighthawk69]

Henry Kuo:

Your review is exactly why I just bought the K7T Pro myself.. waiting on the fan for the 1.1Ghz T-Bird before I can install it though =(

 

[Henry Kuo]

you are talking about Pro2 right? Don't scare me... thr Pro1 doesn't have multiplier settings.

 

[VotTak]

I'd suggest Abit KT7 with or without RAID.
By the way in that review ( written by Henry Kuo ) I did not notice comparison with Abit or Asus boards which are really not so bad. I believe they deserved to be tested also and placed in the list. A lot of people are using Abit mobos and are kind of happy.
Also I did not notice in thet review overclocking comparison( how high can you O/C the same CPU on different boards ) and that one would be really helpfull.
And, hey, damac, try to compare position of the SocketA on MSI K7T Pro2 and Abit KT7 RAID. Notice difference? Guess where it would be easier to install( reinstall ) Heatsink/Fan?

 

[Henry Kuo]

VotTak - our individual reviews will focus more on the board itself. we might do comparisons with board that are very similar (like the Pro2 and Pro1), but we won't compare to the other boards until the round up.

In the round up sure I will demonstrate the power between the ABIT, ASUS, and MSI. But that's not gonna happen in the individual reviews.

The reason why I don't have scores for ASUS and ABIT is coz' I don't have those boards, and I was not the one reviewing the boards, so I couldn't just grab the scores across.

I do want to stress that I am NOT saying MSI is the best. In fact, I have nothing to back myself up. However, I have probably the strongest reason to support my point that the Pro2 is the most stable, which is what damac needs. If you read our reviews, you will notice that the Pro1 is the most stable board in our first KT133 round up. I have the Pro1, and I can tell you the Pro2 is simply way more stable than the Pro1. And in the retail version the caps are even better. Go figure. I made my recommendation solely on his needs.

Definitely if someone come up and ask me what boards are the best, I would say ASUS, ABIT, and MSI. If you notice that's what I am doing in several posts. I am sure ABIT and ASUS are excellent boards as well, just that I still need time to get them.

For all the requests you want (comparison and o/c performance with ABIT and ASUS), wait till our round up.

 

[VotTak]

Hey,Henry Kuo!
Please do not think ( or assume ) my reply as some kind of criticizm. It was not posted with that intention. That review is great and the only thing I can say to person who did that review ( in this case to you ) is big THANK YOU.

 

[thai]

i dont know. im rather reluctant to jump on the band wagon.

i'm curious how the msi got a 9 point rating on the stability score when henry is new here, and like he mentioned, he doesnt have any fact and didnt have access to other boards like the asus and the abit board. what he repeadedly suggesting is that the msi pro2 has bigger capacitors, therefore, it is more stable. this is hard to believe for me. heck...if i replace a tiny capacitor on my board with a 1farad cap, will my mb be even more stable? again, its hard to believe and not very scientific.

his review of the pro2 does sound very tempting, however, there is an incentive if henry is doing a good review for msi because look on anandtech front page, you see that msi bought an ad space there for a very long time now.

i think i ll keep my p3b a lil longer until i see some feedbacks from ordinary anandtech citizens.

 

[Henry Kuo]

VotTak - nonono, don't take me wrong. I was just trying to clarify that. I didn't think that you were pointing at me or something at all. coz' I think I need to make that clear. It's cool. I also have to say that before I got the Pro2 I was longing for the KT7 as well And thank you for your good words! thanks thanks!

thai - if you read the test methodology, stability is something I can actually compare between all boards. I have actually repeated check with Mike Andrawes and Anand on their average crash rate, how they consult the tests, etc... And all my reviews actually have to go through them before publication. You are right that for performance, quality, etc... I might still need more background, but stability is something I am confident that a 9 is worth it.

As for the ads, please don't get us wrong. Company advertising on our site has nothing to do with our ratings. We are alway neutral, and if the board is good, we will say so. If the board is bad, we will say so too.

 

[Henry Kuo]

oh, and btw, the size of a capacitor has nothing to do with stability. it's the quality. those caps are large, but it's their high quality that brings great stability to the board.

in case people wonder, though i don't have the ASUS and ABIT, I have the Pro1. the Pro1 crashed once in 24 hrs. The ASUS and ABIT crashed 2 to 3 times. The Pro2? It didn't crash once until 30 hrs. So there you go the comparison.

And it is good that I have the Pro1. Since I didn't do the Pro1 review, but I can rung my own tests on that board and compare the scores with the one Mike did, so I can get a rough estimate on how my boards compare to the boards I didn't do, though again, by estimation.

 

[Bakwetu]

I second the choice of msi k7tpro2. It is not an entirely new board as it has great similarities with the k7tpro1 and k7pro. It analogous to their 6163, 6163pro and BX master boards, which each brought an improvement over the older ones. So it's likely that the k7tpro2(well, you can never be entirely shure, now can you?) is as stable as the older k7tpro1 and k7pro, which have a great reputation.

About the cpu-you will probably not be able to o/c the 1.1 ghz part all that much. You can save a lot of money by going with a lower clocked part and oc it. I would choose a 900 mhz-1 ghz depending on how much money you want to spend?

 

[thai]

Henry Kuo:


<< oh, and btw, the size of a capacitor has nothing to do with stability. it's the quality. those caps are large, but it's their high quality that brings great stability to the board. >>





thanks for responding, however, above, are you suggesting that the k7pro2 has different and higher quality capacitors than the original k7pro? how were you able to tell that the k7pro2 has better and higher quality capacitors? were you abloe to perform a test on these capacitors? or do you just asume that it is better quality because the k7pro2 just seem somehow run longer w/o a crash than the k7pro, therefore, its capacitors are that of higher quality? i find this also hard to believe.

 

[DaddyG]

As a long time Electrical Engineer, the whole deal with capacitors is really BS. If a mobo is well designed, electrical interference, (noise) can be minimized. The size and type of capacitors is meaningless.

BTW, why buy a 1.1 ghz CPU ?? Your OC limit is 1.25 ghz, not much more than 10%. Consider 'playing' with a Duron, have some fun. By the time you decide on the BIRD odds are that the price will have dropped and you can sell the Duron and still be ahead. A 650 Duron doing the dance at 900 or so is pretty fast.

 

[billyjak]

I have the KT7 Raid and MSI Pro2
My vote goes for the MSI Pro2 any day. Period.

 

[Henry Kuo]

thai - Yours is a valid concern. Since I have heard couple of people asking about this, I may just as well write something about it.

It's definitely not the case that high quality/value/rating capacitorsa instanly make a board rock solid. In fact, maybe of the samller capacitors, something called surface mount, which have no markings on them are potentially more important than the big ones sitting around the socket that determines the quality of the voltage going to the CPU.

But the big ones are what we can find info about and they do matter...the higher thing capacitance value, the better obviously...also the higher their temperature rating the better for long term reliability...finally the manufacturer of the caps can affect thigns as well

but like I said before, the traces and their routes are just as important if not more so...the same goes for those surface mount caps..but we can't get much info on that, so we do what we can... Take the Pro1 and Pro2 (again) as an example. The Pro1 is extremely stable in our tests. Those big 3900uF caps might have helped, but if you remember about the rotated North Bridge, that should have contribute quite some to the stability as well. And if you look at the Pro2, it has almost the identical routing as the Pro1, but it is way more stable. MSI might have tried to change a little bit of routing or surface mount, but I would say those 4700uF caps play a bit of role here.

So when we come to stability, you are right, that a lot of factors contribute to the overall result. However, there aren't too much we can do to analyze all those. I mean, we can try to look at the routing a bit, but it's impossible for us to learn all the routing of a board. Same case for the sourface mount. But we can look at those large caps, where we ARE able to find data on, like temp, manufacturers, size, value, etc... We always try to do what we can do. Anand has been doing this from the beginning. Mike followed, and now I will definitely follow their paths and try to do the best I can to ananlyze the boards.

DaddyG - I can't really say you are wrong. I am an EE grad student, so definitely I lose the experience as you do. But I do learn that caps in a system can help stability (yeah, theory...). I would think a good mobo will need good rounting and all the stuff to reduce noise, but caps are always there to help, otherwise there will be no means for companies to put in all those buildings around the CPU and North Bridge.

 

[blaster1]

My vote is for the Asus A7V,with multiplier dips. I am currently running my Duron 600 @ 1000 and it is rock solid. It is everything I read about and more.