Intel Mainboard Questions

[Heihachi]

Hey Yall,
Going to build a computer using an Intel based motherboard. Do you guys know of any good links that will be helpful in finding the best performance/feature motherboard on the market for DDR mainboards?

I see that there is an I845E (Gigabyte 8IEXP), I845PE (Gigabyte 8PE667), or the SiS 648 chipset.

Anyone recommend one chipset over the other? I originally wanted to get the Gigabyte 8IEXP but it seems a bit dated. Is PE the faster chipset now? If it is, what board should I consider buying. Thanks a lot.

I would prefer the motherboards to include audio,lan,usb2.0, and raid.

Thanks

[sbp]

Yes, the 845PE is Intels latest chipset that officially supports DDR333 ram. It also supports hyperthreading and the P4 3.06GHz. Personally I'd get that chipset for performance and compatibility reasons. And the motherboard I'd with is Asus's P4PE (http://usa.asus.com/mb/socket478/p4pe/overview.htm).

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1723
http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev=mainboards/p4pe/index.html

[Heihachi]

awwww... no onboard raid... how does the Gigabyte board sound?

[MasterRecca]

wats a good mobo to go with rdram pc 1066 and p4 2.8? and wat brand or rdram would you recommend?

[Heihachi]

Originally posted by MasterRecca
wats a good mobo to go with rdram pc 1066 and p4 2.8? and wat brand or rdram would you recommend?

Stay the heck away from pc1066.... something about the technology makes it not work well sometimes. I had nothing but problems w/ an Asus p4t533-c mobo w/ mushkin pc1066... that's why I'm going back to DDR

I suppose the Asus p4pe at newegg doesn't have RAID. I'll check out googlegear.. thanks

[Heihachi]

So I get the raid supported motherboard... plug it in... then realize that the raid only supposrts one SATA HDD and one IDE HDD... what the sham?!!! So I ended up getting a separate Highpoint rocket raid controller card. sheesh.

BTW... anyone have this board.. and could give me exact setting they put to OC their comp. Thanks

[LegendKiller]

My review should state it.

I had the board running 160@cas2, 1.8v I believe. Its an awesome board.

[smurphy]

Don't forget about the Abit BE7 and BE7-II (Raid). Very good board and just as fast as the ASUS just cheaper! I have one and has been very good though I have only had it for 2 weeks.

Cheers,
Scott Murphy

[Heihachi]

Originally posted by LegendKiller
My review should state it.

I had the board running 160@cas2, 1.8v I believe. Its an awesome board.

What RAM and cooling are you using Legendkiller?

[LegendKiller]

I have Mushkin PC3200 and a Millennium Thermal Solutions Glaciator II heatsink.

http://www.millennium-thermal.com/start.htm


Its an awesome heatsink.


LK

[Heihachi]

I wonder how well it will OC w/ a stock HSF that came w/ the CPU.

Now how do I go about OCing this 2.533? hehe. I upped the FSB to 143 off the bat and it's running stable. What should I do to push it more?

[LegendKiller]

I forgot what the max was that I got mine to. I am going to be doing some work on the P4PE this weekend, I will let you know.


LK

[Heihachi]

Originally posted by LegendKiller
I forgot what the max was that I got mine to. I am going to be doing some work on the P4PE this weekend, I will let you know.


LK

Thanks a bunch

[LegendKiller]

I have my 2.4B processor going at 2.826ghz right now. It appears to be perfectly stable, memory is running at 391@CAS2. It went through a full Win2k install using SCSI (usually picky about overclocking). I am going to do some further testing.


LK

[LegendKiller]

Mushkin PC3200


LK

[sbp]

Remember DarkFury its matter of ratio's. Memory does not have to be run at 1:1 with the FSB.

[sbp]

Its an option in the bios:
http://anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1723&p=11

"There are exactly three DRAM:CPU ratios available. If you're running, for example, a Northwood-B processor (FSB = 133MHz), your memory options would include 266MHz, 333MHz, and 355MHz. Just like with the other 845PE board, these are not independent ratios, meaning that when you raise the FSB the memory is also raised accordingly."

http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev=mainboards/p4pe/p4.html
"When running at 133mhz FSB you have a variety of memory speeds to choose from, 266MHz, 333MHz, and 355MHz.. During other testing, I was able to choose higher speeds based on the multipliers for the memory speed. At 160mhz FSB I was able to choose 320 and 400 memory speeds."

The multiplier of the P4 2.4B GHz is 18.
Overclocked speed 2.826GHz/18=157Mhz FSB
391 MHz memory speed

391 MHz /157MHz=2.5 ratio
Hence 333MHz option was done.

355MHz/133MHz=2.67
333MHz/133MHz=2.5
266MHz/133MHz=2