Well, I had a string of bad luck lately. My Asus P4S800-MX up and died. The only replacement I had was a Foxconn SiS648. I was using an old 400MHz fsb 2.2GHz P4 Northwood at 3.1GHz.
The Foxconn board didn't let me overclock with the bios, settings were there, but it would default at 100MHz fsb every boot. So I swapped a 2.53GFHz (533MHz fsb) and it overclocked a little low, only 3.0GHz when the P4S800-MX runs it at 3.2GHz easy. But it still benchmarked 3DMark very fast, about the same as the SiS661 board at 200MHz faster.
But all of a sudden after a week, the cpu started throttling bad. No heat issues, so I swapped cpu's again and it was definately the motherboard.
Now my only backup was a POS ancient 845 chipset. It only has 400MHz fsb, not even 533MHz. But it worked like a champ, and while my gaming benchmarks were slower at 2.2GHz and 266MHz memory, it was very snappy on the desktop (only about 15% slower than 3.1GHz and 400MHz DDR on a SiS661 and Radeon 9600XT in 3DMark). I did a little research and saw the old 845 chipset had some really low memory latency, although gaming benchmarks are not as good as the 865 or later SiS chipsets.
I know I'm rambling, but now I will get to the point. I popped a Mobile Celeron 1.8GHz on the old 845 and it booted perfectly, no mods. I found a website that had a new 845PE chipset motherboard for $28 shipped. It has 533MHz fsb support and 333MHz DDR and I have a 2.4GHZ Mobile Celeron on the way. Pin mod and 3.2GHz in the bag. $28 + $53 for 3.2GHz goodness, what a deal! I am willing to bet the 845PE chipset will get very close to a SiS chipset in gaming benchmarks, even with the fsb and memory speeds limited if the cpu is running identical speeds.
I will have it up and running later next week, I will post the results. If it works, I will post a link for the website that has the $28 845PE motherboard. $81 for a cheap gaming system, not top of the line, but plenty of power for a mid-range video card like a 6600GT.
The Foxconn board didn't let me overclock with the bios, settings were there, but it would default at 100MHz fsb every boot. So I swapped a 2.53GFHz (533MHz fsb) and it overclocked a little low, only 3.0GHz when the P4S800-MX runs it at 3.2GHz easy. But it still benchmarked 3DMark very fast, about the same as the SiS661 board at 200MHz faster.
But all of a sudden after a week, the cpu started throttling bad. No heat issues, so I swapped cpu's again and it was definately the motherboard.
Now my only backup was a POS ancient 845 chipset. It only has 400MHz fsb, not even 533MHz. But it worked like a champ, and while my gaming benchmarks were slower at 2.2GHz and 266MHz memory, it was very snappy on the desktop (only about 15% slower than 3.1GHz and 400MHz DDR on a SiS661 and Radeon 9600XT in 3DMark). I did a little research and saw the old 845 chipset had some really low memory latency, although gaming benchmarks are not as good as the 865 or later SiS chipsets.
I know I'm rambling, but now I will get to the point. I popped a Mobile Celeron 1.8GHz on the old 845 and it booted perfectly, no mods. I found a website that had a new 845PE chipset motherboard for $28 shipped. It has 533MHz fsb support and 333MHz DDR and I have a 2.4GHZ Mobile Celeron on the way. Pin mod and 3.2GHz in the bag. $28 + $53 for 3.2GHz goodness, what a deal! I am willing to bet the 845PE chipset will get very close to a SiS chipset in gaming benchmarks, even with the fsb and memory speeds limited if the cpu is running identical speeds.
I will have it up and running later next week, I will post the results. If it works, I will post a link for the website that has the $28 845PE motherboard. $81 for a cheap gaming system, not top of the line, but plenty of power for a mid-range video card like a 6600GT.
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