Which P4 DDR motherboard should i get?

[PreDatoR]

I'm building a P4 setup for a buddy of mine. Well actually an upgrade. Which DDR board would you recommend. I thought AMD was a PITA to find a board for. It needs to have decent overclocking features. Vcore, Vmem, Vagp(can live without) FSB adjustments Ram tweakage. I know there's the Sis 645 boards. I've been recommended the MSI 645 ultra by more than one person. Would like to have ATA133 onboard also but can live with ATA100 for now. Don't need Raid onboard sound nic or none of that junk but if it has it its no biggie. something in the 100 dollar range too... I know there's a bunch of you running 1.6a's around here. i've already picked up a 1.6a that will go 2.33 no problem with stock cooling so it needs to be able to be cranked up. I was thinking about the Asus P4B266-C how well does that one work and how are the features on it? Which of the 4 chipsets out for the P4's is the best one to get?

 

[steelthorn]

I would go with the Asus P4b266 if it was me. There boards are very reliable. I speak from experience.
I have one myself.

 

[oldfart]

Only thing with the P4B266 is no 3:4 mem ratio above 132 FSB. This is the reason I didn't get one. The EPOX 4BDA allows 3:4 @ any FSB. This will give you a very large performance advantage over a 1:1 board like the ASUS. For instance, 133 FSB = 266 DDR on the ASUS, 354 DDR on the EPOX. 150 FSB = 300 DDR on the ASUS. 400 DDR on the EPOX. Mem BW is key on a P4 system. The EPOX is the best i845 board out there IMHO (and many others).

 

[dbwillis]

My Asus P4S333 is running perfectly with the DDR at 333 speeds..no hiccups or problems AT ALL!

1.6a@2133@1.55v, Crucial DDR266 @DDR333@2.7v

 

[PreDatoR]

That Epox board how high does the VCore go? I know most of the damn Via kt266a boards would only allow .1v's higher that stock. What is the Vcore on the P4a's.. i bought one and don't know ran AMD for the last year and half and skipped the whole P3 phase all together. Last Intel chip i owned was a 566 celeron. Just tryin' to get a feel for some of the boards and figure out what i want... i'm leaning towards the MSI 645U cause of price but i'm just wondering how it stacks up performance wise next to the Intel i845D chipset.

 

[oldfart]

Vcore adjustments are -.1 to +.3 from stock. For a 1.5 Vcore P4 NW, you get 1.4 - 1.8. The board also has a PCI/AGP lock feature that sets PCI/AGP to 33/66 at any FSB above 117. I heard about this board over @ HardOCP Forums. It is very popular there. I haven't seen an 845 board yet that compares. I'm very happy with mine. Mwave has it for $99.

 

[jcmkk]

I'd go with the MSI. I've had good luck with the SIS645 chipset, and very good performance. Toms Hardware gave it top honors amongst the 645 boards. The SIS645 motherboards perform better than the i845D chipset because of the higher memory clock. They seem to have a lot of extra settings too.

 

[Pabster]

Avoid the MSI like the plague. It's priced low and isn't worth a penny more.

If you want top-end DDR performance, SiS 645(/DX) is where it's at. The only board I can recommend in that category is the ASUS P4S333. It's an awesome board at an incredible price. Look for the P4S533 very shortly, utilizing the SiS 645DX core logic.

That said, there's something to be said for Intel's i845-D chipset. It's not the speediest solution, but it isn't far behind. And it is solid as a rock. For me personally, I'll sacrifice a few points in synthetic benchies for the compatibility, stability, and reliability this chipset offers over the alternatives.

 

[oldfart]

I've seen complaints on the MSI 645 here an @ [ H ] forums. The 845 is solid, and very fast. With the 3:4 mem timings, you can run some very fast DDR speeds. I run my 1.6A @ 144 FSB, 2.3 GHz, 384 DDR. It will go to 150 FSB, 2.4 GHz 400 DRR, but I'm not crazy about the 1.7 Vcore my 1.6A needs to get there.

 

[PreDatoR]

Well i just ordered the Epox 4BDA from Mwave... Should be here thursday along with the chip. woohoo! I'm gonna do a bunch of benchmarks on this system and my XP 1700+ @1.7Gig i wanna see how well the 2 stack up... I know clock for clock the XP will smoke the P4 but i wanna see how bad the P4 will outrun it at 2.4 Gig

 

[anime]

Epox 4sda+ and gigabyte 8srx -- I've used both and like them. Like gigabyte better due to dualbios--it's a lifesaver!
got my 1.6 to 2.3ghz w/o any efforts using stock heatsink

 

[oldfart]

Good choice PreDatoRWuZHerE. Be sure to give us the scoop how it runs. Do you have good ram? To get those 350 - 400 MHz DDR speeds with the 3:4 timing, you need good stuff. The Samsung PC2700 is a good bet.

 

[PreDatoR]

I'e got some Kingmax PC 2700 here but will probably end up grabbing a 512 Meg stick of Samsung Pc2700. This Kingmax stuff just don't handle aggressive ram timings at all... 151 on my XP333 won't do anything over the normal timing.

 

[Barrei]

Pabster I couldn't agree with you more about the stability of the 845d intel chipset, I have built to sis645/961 systems one with asus p4s333 and biostar m7sxf both were very unstable and the funny thing is the cheap biostar actually worked better then the asus , go figure. My own personal experience with sis chipsets has not been good and I would never recommend them .{no offence intended to people who like them}