It's been a while since I did any reading but last report had the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe in the lead very slightly over the Max3 in terms of overall compatibility and speed. And please make sure you get a v2.0 if you go for the Asus - the prior (which I have) has some fairly radical voltage swings, this issue was addressed with better components on the 2.0. There's actually a fix for earlier versions on the net but involves some pretty tight soldering.
Well, ABIT managed to send me another rev 1.1 IC7 (gee, thanks a lot guys, I really appreciate it ) and I may sell it and buy something else.
So, what's the best overclocking i875 board out there?
Excuse my ignorance in matters of the Pentium kind Geeky, but what's the problem with the IC7? I was under the impression that it was quite a good o/cing board or does it have known issues?
The 1.1 IC7 is akin to <i>not</i> receiving the 2.0 revision of the NF7-S.
Thanx Thrax I understand now.
just as a side issue, my old rev 1.2 NF7-S (R.I.P.)was the best o/cing NF7-S board I got, 235 fsb stable. All my rev 2.0's wont go above 220-230
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited June 2004
Basically what Thrax said. There's nothing really wrong with the rev 1.1 IC7 (except the cpu temperature reading), any more than there's anything really wrong with the rev 1.x NF7. However, it's not nearly as good as the rev 2.x boards.
The DFI LanParty 875B and the Infinity 875 (same basic board) have both been seen to hit 300MHz FSB... I may end up getting one of those.
Geeky, If you're thinking about DFI check out quality control and bios support issues. I don't know what its like for the intel boards but theres been more than a few problems for the Nforce based boards. I was lucky and got a really good, fast stable board but there have been many people with boards dying on them for a variety of reasons & official bios support sucks. However as stated I dont know if the same applies for their intel based boards.
For overclocking a P4 system without modding the board, the P4C800-E Rev 2.0 is the best board. The CPU voltage & VDIMM droops of the Rev 1.x boards have been solved in Rev 2, however it still only offers VDIMM voltages of up to 2.85V, which could impeed your ability to OC your memory.
However, if you perform the MC64 cap removal from the IC7-MAX3 and preform a couple of other mods (some tight soldering), the MAX3 offers absolute best i875 performance as it offers finer control over the aggressiveness of the memory interface and a VDIMM of 3.2V.
BTW Geeky, what CPU do you plan to stick in this board? P4C or P4E?
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited June 2004
Actually, I like a stock IC7-Max3 with latest BIOS flashed to it. Behaves sweet with Corsair DDR400 C2PT RAM. I have a Northwood non HT and a Prescott running now, one in each box, both boxes have same motherboard. REAL sweet combo. I do not OC hugely, though, just minorly. I will be running a GIG of Dual-channel C2PT (same speed and brand) per box of that kind shortly.
I will say this. If DFI pulled up in front of my house with a semi full of gold inlaid motherboards I would set it on fire.
When I was with DPT/Adaptec we had problems with DFI designs being out of spec. Our engineering would contact their engineering and so on. The bottom line was DFI didn't care. We were a high end product (server RAID) and that wasn't their market so they didn't care. We told them that we were getting customer complaints against there boards and they again said they didn't care.
Plus the boards had a HIGH failure rate and looked like they were made by elementary soldering students. I saw no signs of quality control.
Actually, I like a stock IC7-Max3 with latest BIOS flashed to it. Behaves sweet with Corsair DDR400 C2PT RAM. I have a Northwood non HT and a Prescott running now, one in each box, both boxes have same motherboard. REAL sweet combo. I do not OC hugely, though, just minorly. I will be running a GIG of Dual-channel C2PT (same speed and brand) per box of that kind shortly.
Stock MAX3's work fine for anything up to mild overclocking with a VDIMM below 2.85V at a 1:1 ratio. With that C2PT memory, running Street Racer or F1 would help out
The problem with the MAX3 is that it can't deliver stable memory voltages over 2.85V and doesn't like to work well at high FSB speeds with anything other than a 1:1 MEM:FSB ratio. The only way to solve the memory voltages issue is to mod the board.
IMHO, the latest BIOS (1.6) sucks balls. I had major problems with both my Silicon Image RAID array and my ICH5R SATA RAID array after moving to that BIOS, not to mention the system hanging on startup during drive detect, the random BSOD's that never occured before and the hard-locks in Windows. It's not an isolated incident: ABIT Forums: BIOS 16 For MAX3
Comments
I'll let you know how it goes.
Excuse my ignorance in matters of the Pentium kind Geeky, but what's the problem with the IC7? I was under the impression that it was quite a good o/cing board or does it have known issues?
*weeps*
Gobbles
Thanx Thrax I understand now.
just as a side issue, my old rev 1.2 NF7-S (R.I.P.)was the best o/cing NF7-S board I got, 235 fsb stable. All my rev 2.0's wont go above 220-230
The DFI LanParty 875B and the Infinity 875 (same basic board) have both been seen to hit 300MHz FSB... I may end up getting one of those.
Intel makes powerful chipsets. It's just a pity their chipset R&D hasn't met their CPU R&D for coffee in years.
However, if you perform the MC64 cap removal from the IC7-MAX3 and preform a couple of other mods (some tight soldering), the MAX3 offers absolute best i875 performance as it offers finer control over the aggressiveness of the memory interface and a VDIMM of 3.2V.
BTW Geeky, what CPU do you plan to stick in this board? P4C or P4E?
When I was with DPT/Adaptec we had problems with DFI designs being out of spec. Our engineering would contact their engineering and so on. The bottom line was DFI didn't care. We were a high end product (server RAID) and that wasn't their market so they didn't care. We told them that we were getting customer complaints against there boards and they again said they didn't care.
Plus the boards had a HIGH failure rate and looked like they were made by elementary soldering students. I saw no signs of quality control.
My 5 cents.
Stock MAX3's work fine for anything up to mild overclocking with a VDIMM below 2.85V at a 1:1 ratio. With that C2PT memory, running Street Racer or F1 would help out
The problem with the MAX3 is that it can't deliver stable memory voltages over 2.85V and doesn't like to work well at high FSB speeds with anything other than a 1:1 MEM:FSB ratio. The only way to solve the memory voltages issue is to mod the board.
IMHO, the latest BIOS (1.6) sucks balls. I had major problems with both my Silicon Image RAID array and my ICH5R SATA RAID array after moving to that BIOS, not to mention the system hanging on startup during drive detect, the random BSOD's that never occured before and the hard-locks in Windows. It's not an isolated incident: ABIT Forums: BIOS 16 For MAX3
Reverting back to BIOS 15 fixed the problem.