Which of G31/G41 boards OCs to 400MHz FSB best?

[Ken g6]

I have a G31 Gigabyte motherboard, that I've tried overclocking a Q9400 with. I've never been able to get it stable (meaning runs-Prime95-for-a-week stable) above 370MHz FSB. Note that I never bumped the FSB voltage, because I heard G31 runs hot as it is. Should I have? :hmm:

Anyway, [thread=2116080]I scratched it[/thread] while trying to install a video card, and I think it's dead; so I'm now looking for a replacement. I had thought the G41 chipset was better, so I was considering this board. But when I searched Newegg for motherboards that could run at 1600FSB, and fit in my case, all that came up were G31 boards.

So I'm confused. Are any of those boards any good? What micro-ATX board would you recommend, at any price? How about for under $75 or so?

Thanks!

 

[AstroGuardian]

The G41MT from gigabyte can OC to FSB400 but with dual cores only. A quad core is out of range for most G41 boards for overclocking. G41 and G31 paired with ICH7 are not meant to be pushed that hard. It also puts some strain to the memory controller which is not a top notch for Gxx chipsets.

Try lowering the CPU multiplier and see if you can get it stable
Anyways try lowering

 

[jjmIII]

The G41 board is nice. I'm not sure it will OC any better. There are soo many factors in an OC anyhow.

I've had both Gigabyte boards (G31, G41) and they are great, stable boards for so cheap!

Not like it matters, but the G41 plugs will fall right in place where your old boards plugs were. The layout is near identical.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Not like it matters, but the G41 plugs will fall right in place where your old boards plugs were. The layout is near identical.

Yes indeed. The boards are almost identical. They only have the MCH changed. The G41 (a G45 paired with ICH7) has the X4500 DX10 graphics core and the G31 (G35 paired with ICH7) has the X3100 core. Aside from that there are only some minor changes. Nothing serious.

 

[Ken g6]

Ah. I was unaware that there are higher-level chipsets than G41, like G43 or G45. Apparently this is because almost none of them come in micro-ATX, and none of them are in my price range except maybe this one.

So does G43 overclock much better? I'll add nVIDIA 9300 too; though I probably won't get one.

 

[AstroGuardian]

So does G43 overclock much better? I'll add nVIDIA 9300 too; though I probably won't get one.

The G41 and G43 are limited to 8 GB of RAM and they don’t support 1080p/i HD video acceleration. The G41 only has eight instead of 12 USB 2.0 ports, and four rather than six SATA/300 ports, due to the ICH7 southbridge; all other 4-series chipsets are based on the ICH10.

Aside from that they are the same. They should offer similar overclocks.

 

[Ken g6]

Thanks for the insights. After all that...I ordered the same board I got before, the G31. It's cheap, and hopefully it works well again.