Asus P4S533 with 645dx vs MSI 6566E with 845E

[slatr]

I am wanting to buy one of these boards locally to overclock a pentium 4 2.0 northwood.

I like the idea of the 400mhz memory on the P4S533 but I am worried about stability. The MSI board has the 845e chipset but will only run the memory at 266/2100 ddr.

Anyone have any opinions on these two?

Compusa has them locally and I don't want to wait to order and these two seem to be among the few choices.

I would really appreciate any advice. I have only owned Asus and Abit motherboards but I know in the past SIS based products were very unstable.

Slatr

 

[Rankor]

I have been using two variants of the 845E Max board: the original Max and now, the Max-L with onboard 10/100 Intel Lan VE.

Both have been excellent in terms of stability. The AMI bios features leave something to be desired considering that it is not as option/feature rich as say an Award bios. The temperature reporting on the Intel procs seems to be a little higher than other motherboards' brands by about 5-6 C in some cases.

 

[slatr]

Thanks for the reply Rankor.

I had went ahead and got the P4s533. The board seems very stable, but I am not real happy with the overclocking aspect. I should have been patient and looked for a board that would let you lock the PCI clock. As you increase the bus speed between 100 and 133 the PCI clock rises from 33 into the low 40s and then drops back to 33 at 133. I can't get it to be very stable over 112 and I have a 2.0ghz northwood. Trying to increase it last night I corrupted some data somehow and had to reinstall XP.

I should have know that I wouldn't be able to hit 2660 with it. Chip runs very cool at 2240 though.

Can you lock the PCI and or AGP bus speeds on your MSI boards?

Slatr

 

[Duvie]

That is true....The high multiplier of the 2.0ghz (20x) kills you on the intel chipsets as the memory ratios are not attractive enough yet they could lock the pci down since getting to 133fsb may be very difficult for you....

The sis chipset have attractive mem ratios allowing 333mhz ddr and higher at default 400fzb but if you have picky components good luck...

I got my asus p4s333 mobo up to 125fsb with 41.667 pci and it ran fine for 10 weeks with no corruption....

Components have to be just right and do not use onboard sound...

How hard did you try for 2.66ghz??? How high of vcore?? lay it down to 1.7-1.75v(actual) and go for it. leave mem ratio at 1:1 for now and test it....

 

[o1die]

Have you tried it in jumper mode? I use the cpu boost jumper next to the socket area, set the ddram voltage to 2.7 and turn on dip switches 2 and 3 for 133 cpu/166 ddram. The pci reads 33 in the bios with these settings. Don't know about the agp reading.

 

[slatr]

Thanks for the heads up guys.

I am going to try 2666 again today. When I tried it last with voltage on the cpu raised to 1.65 , the machine started to power up and then it just died, completely shut down.

I am using the 300 watt ps that came with my ANtec case. I wonder if that might be part of it???

I will try again first with 1:1 memory ratios and then with the jumper settings to see how far I can get.

Thanks again,

Slatr

 

[Racer7201]

I've got the P4S533 and its been great so far. With a 1.8a its running @ 2.52, 140fsb, 4:5 ratio and totally stable. With a retail h/s fan the temps are staying around 34-36c in normal use with a vcore of 1.52.
JF
P4S533
1.8a @ 2.52
256m Mushkin pc3200
Maxtor 80g ata133
Matrox G400 Max d/h
Enermax 350w whisper p/s
TDK 16x cdrw