Can anyone recommend me a good & fairly cheap P4 DDr motherboard?

[Xtasy]

Can anyone please help me with this? I'm looking for

intel or sis chipset
Good overclocking options (great for northwood 1.6a overclocking)
vcore, vdimm, and possibly vagp
good memory overclocking to get my samsung pc2700 to pc3200
under $80 for sis, under $100 for intel

nice if it had built-in 10/100 lan
nice if it had good built-in hardware sound (non ac-97) w/ spdif optical output for my mini disc

RAID & ATA133 are not necessary

Basically I'm looking for a motherboard that will only needs a vga card added in, no other pheriperals needed (ie. lan, sound). Thanks alot.

 

[galtsfan]

ABIT BG7 Intel 845G chipset P4 478 ATX motherboard Retail
Specifications:
Supported CPU:Intel Pentium® 4 Socket 478 processor
Chipset:Intel 845G (ICH4) chipset
FSB:400/533MHz System Data Bus
RAM:3 184 pin DDR DIMM module up to 2GB MAX PC1600 and PC2100
IDE:2 Channel Bus Master IDE Ultra DMA 33/66/100 (up to 4 devices)
Slots:5xPCI, 1xAGP,
Ports:1xFD 1xSerial 1xParallel 2xUSB 2.0 1xRJ45 1xVGA and Audio ports
Onboard Audio:Realtek ALC650 (AC-Link) 6 Channel
Onboard LAN:RTL 8100B 10/100Mb

Newegg- $120+5s/h=$125

Others rave about this board

 

[Xtasy]

How good are the overclocking options?

 

[CrazySaint]

EPoX 4G4A at mwave.com. Supports 3:4 and 4:5 mem ratios, adjustable vcore up to 2.85v adjustable vdimm (not sure about vagp). Excellent overclocker.

 

[Xtasy]

I heard that the 4g4a is much worse than the 4g4a+, is that true or is the 4g4a only without raid? THanks.

 

[CrazySaint]

Only difference is 4G4A+ has LAN and RAID, 4G4A doesn't.

 

[Xtasy]

What kind of audio does the 4g4a have? I can't afford to get a seperate hardware sound yet.

 

[Vette73]

Get the Shuttle AV45GT2. It has a On-Board C-Media 5.1 shound card.

Link to the Board with a PICTURE

 

[Xtasy]

Are there any good alternatives to the epox 4g4a? Just asking so i can asess my options. THanks.

 

[Athlon4all]

4G4A is solid. Highly recommend it.

 

[Xtasy]

I heard somewhere that the missing atx 12volt connector on the 4g4a caused certain instability when overclocked. Is that true?

 

[oldfart]

Thats kind of an odd question when looking at your sig isn't it?

 

[Xtasy]

Oh, that thing in my signature is not my rig, that is what i WANT!

 

[CrazySaint]

The EPoX 4G4A/+ has the Realtek ALC650 6-channel AC'97 based audio chip. Its a decent "mid-range" audio solution - not as good as the C-Media 8738 audio chipset that some boards use, but still a hell of a lot better than standard AC '97.

 

[Gregor1C]

Everyone seems to be on the same track, buy a MoBo with the new i845G chip set. I just bought the ASUS P4b533-V myself for $170 this week. It has sound /video onboard. The Epox MoBo has sound only for $120. Both overclock well.

 

[Xtasy]

CrazySaint,
How good is the epox 4g4a ac-97 v2.2 compared to the creative 5880 or the creative sb cards pc128 and lower? I really don't mind how many channels it is, as i only use 2.1 sound system, but i do care if the quality of the sound is acceptable. I just had bad expierence with ac-97 as it sounds like total crap.

 

[CrazySaint]

I honestly don't have direct experience with either one, but I would expect them to sound about the same, with the Creative 5880 or SB PCI128 having the advantage of being hardware based so it would use a few less CPU cycles than the ALC650.

 

[benjamin]

The Gigabyte 8IEXP is fantastic. I just got one today and while I haven't put an OS on yet, I've configured it all and it seems great. I've been reading similar reports around the place.

It has:
- Onboard Creative sound, including coaxial and optical digital outputs
- 6 USB ports, I think they're all USB2.0 but I'm not sure
- Promise 20676 ATA133/RAID controller
- 3 Firewire ports (i was impressed at this even though i'll probably never use them )
- Onboard Intel 10/100 NIC (I think it's in the chipset)
- Onboard headers for two different types of flash media, I think they're Sony MemoryStick and SecureDigital, but I'm not sure.

Hope this helps. I can say it's been flawless so far although I admittedly haven't done much with it.