Best Mobo And Chip?

[Microgers87]

Im looking for a Good motherboard and good chip to go along with... any suggestions? price range really doesnt matter.. looking for something fast and stable

[New-b]

What I have in sig
This was a few days ago....haven't gone too much higher (YET!)
http://new-b.us/Server/Mobile2531.JPG

[Gizmo]

I dunno, I really like my Abit NF7-S.

If you are looking for an AMD board, it is really hard to go wrong with any of the NF2 based mobos. Epox has several good ones by repute, by I am not experienced with them.

As for chip, again, if you are looking for AMD, the best bang for the buck seems to be the XP-M 2500+. This chip is unlocked and seems to OC very well.

[JMa2969]

Originally Posted by gizmo

I dunno, I really like my Abit NF7-S.

If you are looking for an AMD board, it is really hard to go wrong with any of the NF2 based mobos. Epox has several good ones by repute, by I am not experienced with them.

As for chip, again, if you are looking for AMD, the best bang for the buck seems to be the XP-M 2500+. This chip is unlocked and seems to OC very well.

I can say that I really love my spankin' new AN7 (wish i had known about the Mobile being compatible with the XP boards though). I got a 2600+ Barton.....Week 1-2004..so VERY locked. But the micro guru fan eq is worth it's wieght in gold to me. You can adjust your fan high and low temps/rpm ratio (ex. if I want my CPU to top out at 48c under load I just set the fan to max RPM's at 48c, then it works an a sliding scale from low temp to high...the higher the temp the higher the rpm's). I guess I am using a very unliked or unknown fan set. I bought a Vantec Aeroflow and it is working great for me. I have an Antec 1080 Performance plus with 5 case fans installed soi guess that helps some...but the Vantec really does it's job as wheni set a max temp,it spins up to around 5700 rpm's and the temp increase stops...dead...no matter what I do to it...so i am happy. It is a hybrid copper base with aluminum body and seems very well built and sure is solid. I have heard some complaint about the fan dying later in life, but that's why I love the automatic variable rpm adjust in the AN7....lower fan speeds will definately prolong the life of the fan, and it really works. It very rarely runs wide open. I had a DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B die on me in 3 days with very little overclock (it was actually an in Windows flash that killed it) and an ASUS A7N8XE-Deluxe that ran like garbage....no overclock beyond syncing my CPU with my RAM at 200 Mhz, and the sil3112A performed horribly in testing (it was running at 16 bit instead of it's 32 bit transfer...) and all ASUS tech. support had to say is "it's borke, send it in and we will fix it or send it back to who you bought it from....BTW, ASUS does not replace even new boards or video cards...they repair them, even if bad out of the box. I don't know about you, but if I shell out money for a new board and it gets to me bad...I want a NEW replacement!!! Live and learn. I always shop at NewEgg.com. They refund or replace with new, no games, no hassles (they have a 30 day money back guarantee, but my old board fried and I had to keep the limping ASUS in the machine for two months while I sorted out the MOBO situation, and when I FINALLY got a board that worked, they RMA'd for a full refund, no questions asked. There are better places to buy small parts (their shipping is horrible....you buy a $4.99 tube of Arctic Silver and they charge 4-6 dollars shipping) but if you buy a large item,,,say a mobo or a video card, then shipping is usually free and they throw in complimentary items like hats and t-shirts :-) ). But regardless, they have earned my businessfor life (providing they don't pull a customer support ASUS). Just my $.02 worth. Shopp around and read the boards, they are the best source for advice I have found.

[Gizmo]

I would like the AN-7 a lot if the OC utilities that came with the board worked without locking the thing up, or Abit would let things like MBM work with it. As it is, it's not for me. I'm glad you are happy with it though....

[dolanenwindrift]

The ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe is a sweet board as well - very stable and packed with features. Check my sig and you will see I'm running stable on air @2.2 ghz with the XP 2400+, which is pretty good considering I'm running a stock heatsink fan combo. Definitely look at the nForce2 motherboards, though I do recommend staying away from the ECS NF2 board - just read my earlier threads about that.

[mixx666]

I'v owned the Epox 8RDA+ and the Abit NF7, now I have the DFI ultra infinity, if you combine it with the new 2600 mobile Bartons, you can get an insane overclock, many chips like mine are hitting 2500mhz prime stable on just a reguler heatsink, and 2700mhz with great cooling on a low voltage

[JMa2969]

I had the A7N8XE-Deluxe...it is not much of a board of it wont break 200 FSB (mine wouldn't) and if you look at their bios they are using a REALLY outdated SATA bios from Silicon Image that posts horribly. I already RMA'd mine. I had a 2600 Barton at 1901 doing 2300 on air, but you can do better than that with other boards. I will be honest, the AN7 I am running is sometimes "buggy" bet it gets better with every bios release and update that Abit puts out. When was the last time ASUS posted an update for the Bios or drivers to improve performance....like, last year....I RMA'd mine yesterday (finally) and got this one. I talk alot recently with the RMA guys at NewEgg (with a "DFI and an ASUS MOBO and ASUS VGA RMA's you would guess) and they say that the best they sell are by far ABIT and MSI (the guy I talked to today said he wouldn't run anything but MSI but they aren't that big in the NForce2...they have maybe one or two with little to no options...if you are a VIA person go for it though). That is just my opinion (backed up by a little investigating). They do, by the way, say ASUS is by far the worst, although DFI is up there. I only have one experience with DFI and it could have been a fluke...but two products from ASUS that were garbage...i will bever buy another product from them (I just lucked into buying Abit and MSI before I even had this conversation...BTW....just so no-one is thinking I got some inside info to buy....I have had the MOBO for a week and the VGA for a month and I just found out about this stuff yesterday!!!! ?What a lucky month for me...lol...I only had to re-format my HDD's 10 times in the past two months...not fun :-( ).
Tim

[SteveI]

The best thing about the NF7 and the AN7... 5bit FID.

This allows for any multiplier high or low on an unlocked CPU. If you couple that with a new mobile barton, the sky's the limit. You don't have to get the best memory in the world and pray for a good FSB.... Hell, you can run 18x if you wanna.

[dolanenwindrift]

You'll never get me near another MSI board, after I went through FIVE boards from them back when then 1.0 GHZ Athlon came out. Odd that you couldn't get 200mhz on the RAM though, my generic Kingston PC2700s will run 200 mhz no problem.

[JMa2969]

I never said I didn't get 200 Mhz on the RAM or the processor. I got that fine. But above 200 Mhz FSB both boards were useless..and it is.t like I didn;t have the power or the low temps required to get over 200 Mhz FSB. With the AN7 I have hit 220 Mhz FSB on air...although still working on stability...working out latencies...if anyone has any suggestions...please feel free to PM me

[Gizmo]

I've had both my AN-7 and my NF7-S up to 228 using OCZ EL PC3200 Platinum at the same timings you are running. I had to take the RAM to 2.9 volts. Messing with the chipset voltage (Vdd) didn't do squat; in fact, it made things worse. I'm running with CPU interface on, and with the same memory timings you have. If I try to run 11-2-2-2, I get all kinds of errors that I just can't get rid of without droping the FSB down to like 220. These settings are 100% error-free in memtest86 for 24 hours on my system.

[whatever]

Originally Posted by Microgers87

Im looking for a Good motherboard and good chip to go along with... any suggestions? price range really doesnt matter.. looking for something fast and stable

I like the DFI LanParty B board. It is built for FSB overclocking. Maintains great stability at high FSBs while gaming and stunning performance. There are more memory options in the BIOS to experiment to get the best performance possible. LanParty is expensive.. and rather luxury. If the money is an issue, get the DFI Infinity Ultra, just as good FSB overclocking board.

[JMa2969]

Thanks Gizmo, I will give those settings a try. I also found that overvolting the chipset never had any effect on my performance.

[Gizmo]

JMa,

In answer to your query about CPU Interface, it actually tightens your memory timings and makes them more aggressive. See, there are a whole load of timing settings that the BIOS makes for accessing memory that we don't have direct access to. Setting CPU Interface to Enabled changes these timings and reduces the memory latency. It also has the side effect of reducing your maximum stable FSB. I have not found this to be a problem, as the difference in memory bandwidth more than makes up for the loss in FSB. To give you and idea of the difference, with my OCZ EL PC3200 memory, I can hit 228 FSB with 11-3-2-2 and CPU Interface enabled. If I set CPU Interface to Disabled, I can push another 10 mhz or so of FSB out of my system and run 11-2-2-2, but I won't have quite the memory throughput that I have at the lower FSB setting.

(BTW, that's Tras, Trcd, Trp, Tcas for those of you that are curious).

[JMa2969]

Originally Posted by gizmo

JMa,

In answer to your query about CPU Interface, it actually tightens your memory timings and makes them more aggressive. See, there are a whole load of timing settings that the BIOS makes for accessing memory that we don't have direct access to. Setting CPU Interface to Enabled changes these timings and reduces the memory latency. It also has the side effect of reducing your maximum stable FSB. I have not found this to be a problem, as the difference in memory bandwidth more than makes up for the loss in FSB. To give you and idea of the difference, with my OCZ EL PC3200 memory, I can hit 228 FSB with 11-3-2-2 and CPU Interface enabled. If I set CPU Interface to Disabled, I can push another 10 mhz or so of FSB out of my system and run 11-2-2-2, but I won't have quite the memory throughput that I have at the lower FSB setting.

(BTW, that's Tras, Trcd, Trp, Tcas for those of you that are curious).

Thanks Gizmo, seems I have soem work to do. Maybe up me Vdimm will help.