What's the best low-cost 1.6a overclocking board??

[lookin4dlz]

I like the results you all are getting, but $130-$160 for a motherboard defeats my purpose for overclocking. I'd like a board that's not so expensive, but provides the memory dividers, etc. so that I won't be limited in my overclocking. I'm thinking about just getting the least expensive 845g or 645DX & get some pretty decent performance, then upgrade at the end of next year to a dual-channel DDR/.09 P4 chip. Thanks for any comments.

 

[Tom]

I've been looking into the same subject for awhile. Probably the lowest cost board with the important overclocking features is the Abit BD7 at about $75. It has agp/pci lock, FSB up to 200, and 3:4 memory divider above 133, these are very useful features. It also has a mixed reputation on several forums so you want to read up on it first.

Next lowest cost, but with a better reputation most places, is the Epox 4BDA for $88. It has the same good features as above, plus I think it has higher vcore, 1.85, without resorting to the wire trick.

Those are the two boards that are low cost and can overclock very high. If you only want to overclock to 133FSB then there are lots more options, including the Sis645 boards. Some of these will also work up to 150FSB or a little more, but the agp/pci will be out of spec to some degree.

The other boards that interest me are the Abit BG7, $112, which uses the newer i845G chipset, and has a 4:5 memory ratio and USB 2.0; and the Abit TH7II, $106, which is the only low cost rdram choice. At the moment though DDR ram prices have dropped to the point where rdram is considerably more expensive again. (comparing Samsung PC2700 DDR to Samsung RDRAM PC800 which seem to be the best low cost options)


(prices above are from Pricewatch and don't include shipping.)

edit-Just wanted to add that I've been using a 1.8a overclocked to 2.4g in an MSI 645 Ultra for several months and it is a great system. In fact I like it so much that I bought a 1.6a too. So far I haven't been able to decide on a motherboard for it yet; I have used it in the 645 Ultra at 155FSB perfectly stable, but I'm pretty sure it could do considerably higher in a better overclocking board. Also my Geforce3 and pci cards worked fine at the overclocked speed but I don't really like to run those things out of spec. I'm only telling you all this because if you are like me, and won't be satisfied unless you know just how far your 1.6a can go, make sure you get a board that will let you find out.

 

[THUGSROOK]

yep, what he ^ said.

 

[lookin4dlz]

Thanks Dead Parrot. No one has mentioned anything about the MSI 845g boards (about $100 incl ship) - your thoughts?

MSI 845G Max-L @ HardwareZone

"The board also features some pretty nifty overclocking options, including core, DDR and AGP voltage adjustments. Users also get to change the FSB from the default of 100MHz up to 200MHz. Since it now supports new 533MHz Pentium 4 processors, you will get quite a broad range of overclocking options between 100MHz to 133MHz. These frequencies are guaranteed to work without problems. It's probably the time to get yourselves one of those highly overclockable 1.60A Pentium 4 processors and reward yourselves by overclocking it to 2.13GHz."

 

[Tom]

I have looked for info about that board but haven't found out very much. If it had the ability to lock agp/pci speeds I think MSI would advertise that fact so I doubt that it can. Unless it has this feature or something similar it wouldn't be my choice for overclocking above 133FSB. If 133FSB is all you're looking for it's probably fine.

Other than that the biggest drawback is there isn't much feedback that I can find from actual users about it.

 

[lookin4dlz]

I emailed MSI asking for some overclocking specs for this board. Here's what I've found for the MSI 845e, which might be similar:

Standard features include 1MHz increments in FSB (100 to 200MHz), CPU core voltage settings in 25mV steps, AGP voltage adjustments in 0.1V steps (1.5V to 1.8V) and DDR voltage tweaks in 0.1V steps (2.5V to 2.8V). It also appears that the 845e bios allows the SDRAM Frequency to be set the system to run async or sync CPU/RAM (is this the same as agp/pci lock?)

 

[Tom]

No that doesn't affect the agp/pci speed. They are talking about running the memory and cpu at different speeds, eg. run the cpu at 133FSB and the memory at 166(DDR333). To do that you use a cpu/memory ratio of 4:5.

The agp/pci speed is set by a different ratio. Some motherboards give you options to keep these things operating at their normal speeds, 33mhz for pci and 67mhz for agp. Other motherboards apply the ratio automatically and the user is stuck with the automatic setting.

All modern boards have an agp/pci divider of 1:3 which at the normal bus speed of 100mhz gives you 33mhz pci and 67 mhz agp, which is twice the pci speed. Again almost all, I'm sure the MSI 845G does too, have another setting of 1:4 at 133FSB which again gives you 33 pci and 67 agp.

Above 133FSB is where it gets tricky. The boards I talked about above have a feature that allows the user to LOCK the pci and agp speeds at 33 and 67, no matter what FSB speed you pick. Most other boards will continue to use the 1:4 ratio which at a speed of 150FSB , for example gives a pci speed of 37.5 and an agp speed of 75, both of which are out of spec. Many agp and pci devices will work ok overclocked, but some won't. In the worst case you could damage a hard drive and/or get corrupted data running the pci out of spec.

Now, I don't know how the MSI 845G handles these speeds, but the manual for that board doesn't mention anything about it, which leads me to believe that above 133FSB the pci and agp are going to be out of spec.

Additionally, according to someone here, the vcore is limited to 1.6v, which may not be enough to get a stable overclock. This can be overcome by a "wire trick", but some of these other boards have higher vcore options via the bios, which is easier.

Neither of these factors make it a bad board, it just might not be quite as flexible as the others I mentioned.

If I had to decide on a board TODAY, I'd probably go with the Epox 4BDA. There is a user here, OLDFART, who has one and is very happy with it. And there are plenty of others at other forums too.

If you are willing to go out on a limb the Abit BG7 has a couple of features that the 4BDA doesn't have, USB 2.0, which doesn't matter to me, a 4:5 divider, which gives slightly more flexibility at certain FSB speeds, and is based on the newer i845G chipset, which supposedly has a better memory controller, but I don't think it's really significantly better. The drawback is it's very new, and early reports are pretty positive but I don't think it's a proven winner yet.