- May 3, 2002
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After being all set to buy an Athlon XP system, I started hearing about all the insane 1.6A overclocks people have been getting here and changed my mind. The trouble is that even though I know a good bit about AMD motherboards, I know practically nothing about motherboards for Intel chips and only a little more about the chipsets, so I need your input to help me narrow down my choices a bit. Here are some of the things I'm looking for in a motherboard:
- Decent sound. It doesn't have to be great, in fact, I'll be happy with anything that's at least as good as my ancient ESS AudioDrive sound card. I'll probably eventually upgrade to a decent PCI sound card, but for now I have to use the onboard audio.
- Obviously, I want it to be fast and OC well. I wanna get a 1.6A and take is as far as I can with the stock HS/F, then maybe eventually buy a better HS/F and try to take it a bit higher.
- USB 2.0 onboard would be nice, but I can wait on it if I need to, though I understand that USB 2.0 is integrated into the southbridge on the i845E&G chipsets, so I guess that won't be much of an issue.
- Onboard RAID would be a nice bonus, but I don't really care that much about it since I don't plan on setting up a RAID array yet.
- I don't wanna risk frying any of my other computer parts, so an PCI/AGP lock would be a very nice feature.
- Unfortunately, I'm pushing the limits of my budget, so I would really like the cost of the board to be around $120 US or less, though I might go higher if there's a good reason to.
The rest of my system will be spec'd as follows:
Case: Antec PP660B
CPU: P4 1.6A
RAM: Samsung Original PC2700 (chosen because VR-Zone says its the fastest PC2700 RAM and its relatively cheap, but I'm open to similarly-priced suggestions, like maybe the Mushkin PC2700W/Heat spreader)
HD: WD 'SE' 80GB
Video: Radeon LE 32MB DDR (pulled from my current system)
CD-RW: Artec CDRW 32x12x48x IDE BLACK CDRW
- Decent sound. It doesn't have to be great, in fact, I'll be happy with anything that's at least as good as my ancient ESS AudioDrive sound card. I'll probably eventually upgrade to a decent PCI sound card, but for now I have to use the onboard audio.
- Obviously, I want it to be fast and OC well. I wanna get a 1.6A and take is as far as I can with the stock HS/F, then maybe eventually buy a better HS/F and try to take it a bit higher.
- USB 2.0 onboard would be nice, but I can wait on it if I need to, though I understand that USB 2.0 is integrated into the southbridge on the i845E&G chipsets, so I guess that won't be much of an issue.
- Onboard RAID would be a nice bonus, but I don't really care that much about it since I don't plan on setting up a RAID array yet.
- I don't wanna risk frying any of my other computer parts, so an PCI/AGP lock would be a very nice feature.
- Unfortunately, I'm pushing the limits of my budget, so I would really like the cost of the board to be around $120 US or less, though I might go higher if there's a good reason to.
The rest of my system will be spec'd as follows:
Case: Antec PP660B
CPU: P4 1.6A
RAM: Samsung Original PC2700 (chosen because VR-Zone says its the fastest PC2700 RAM and its relatively cheap, but I'm open to similarly-priced suggestions, like maybe the Mushkin PC2700W/Heat spreader)
HD: WD 'SE' 80GB
Video: Radeon LE 32MB DDR (pulled from my current system)
CD-RW: Artec CDRW 32x12x48x IDE BLACK CDRW