Best DDR Intel Mobo for Overclocking

[BuddMan]

Ok, me and James Crivellone are getting close to finishing the specs of my upcoming system and building will begin in two weeks if all goes to plan. I was just wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a mobo that overclocks well. I'm gonna be using CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series 512MB 32MX8 PC-3200C2 With Heat Spreader (1GHz total) for the ram and want to try and push as close as 400MHz as I can get. There a mobo out there that can handle such an overclock like this? I've been looking at ABIT and Gigabyte boards, but any suggestions are welcome. Also needs onboard RAID. And also, how would this DDR ram that I will be using compare to say, a Rambus config? Would it be worth the cost to go with Rambus compared to this?

[Admiral]

Pretty much any Intel 845PE mobo will do the job, yet there's an issue, you have to reach 160fsb to be able to use DDR400 memory.
At 400 CPU fsb you can only use 200 and 266 mem, at 533 CPU fsb, 266/333/355 mem and that increases progressively as you overclock the CPU fsb reaching 400MHz for the memory @160 CPU fsb. You can even go further if your CPU can handle it and you get PC3500 Corsair memory.
If you get such a motherboard I'd advise for the ASUS P4PE and since you also want RAID on it you'll have to go witht the P4PE/R/L/F/SATA (check the available models at the bottom of the page).

If memory bandwidth is your main concern, wait for the granite bay mobos (3,4 weeks ?), Intel's 8xAGP dual channel DDR chipset. Though they'll only officially support 266 MHz memory with rummored unofficial 333 from some motherboard makers, it will be dual channel.
Overclockers.com has a chart which tells you how it will theoretically perform.
You'll need two ram sticks to make use of it and since you already plan to get two 512 Corsair sticks you're set.
Look at how many people are drooling over it on the asusboards forums

[Dogbert]

If you're going AMD, try Asus.

[BuddMan]

I said Intel Dogbert.

Admiral, yeah, James said it would be best to wait for the Granite Bays to come out, so I might just do that. Any other info would be appreciated if anyone else has any recommendations.

[Pace]

See sig if you wish...do not buy an Abit motherboard My SE6 just failed. My SA6R (yes, RAID) failed a few months ago, and was generally overclocked, but my SE6 has been treated as well as a motherboard can...and failed today, about 12 hours ago. I checked the caps recently, every one was fine, when I looked in after it locked up today, I saw loads all busted.

As for onboard RAID, I'd kick that in the head as well, and get a real dedicated one - which isn't crap, and which will work, and which will actually be better than basic IDE channels.

The Stung by Abit 'Pace'.

PS: Did I mention not to buy Abit?

[BuddMan]

Lol. So no ABIT. Hmmm...is gonna be hard to convince James of that.

[DGhost]

the recent Asus P4 boards have been having issues with high speed P4's, and also they are fairly iffy with the Parhelias... just another reason i don't like to recommend them....

[BuddMan]

Ok, so Asus and ABIT have been ruled out. How bout Gigabyte?

[The PIT]

Perhaps motherboard manufactures are going the same way as hard disk manufactures. Dodgy.
Msi, Epox anything wrong with them.

[RichL]

Originally posted by The PIT
Perhaps motherboard manufactures are going the same way as hard disk manufactures. Dodgy.
Msi, Epox anything wrong with them.

My Epox (see Sig) is running fine and has been overclocked from day1. Even though its a VIA chipset and has a Creative SBLive, I've never had a single crash I cant attribute to me either running the FSB too high or having a duff driver in Windows 2000.
Last batch of BSODs were down to the previous Beta Matrox G400 driver.
Since updating, it still BSODs occasionally when switching between the G400 and Voodoo5 as primary card, but not as often as it used to.

[K6-III]

I'll vouch for the Epox myself....most extreme voltages out there with excellent support courtesy of Epox Tech at www.aoaforums.com

[DGhost]

epox is pretty good, they did have a while where their boards suffered from QA problems during manufacturing, dunno fi they got over that...

but, besides that... their boards were always reliable and stable... used them since the G2/C2 boards based on the MVP3 chipset...

[K6-III]

The Epox boards I've used:

8K3A+
8K3A
8KHA+
8K7A

Hopefully, the 8RDA+ shall soon be added to that list...

[DGhost]

epox boards i've used (mostly through work, where we sold them)...

MVP3C/C2/C-M/G/G2/G-M
8KTA/+/2
8KTA3/+
KL-133/+
8KLM
8K7A/+
8KHA/+
7KXA/+
CU133A/+
3VCA
BX6
BX7+100
and very limited experiences with the 8K3A's...

they had extremely solid boards that rarely failed up until the 8KHA... right around there they started having massive problems with boards failing... saw a bunch that would be DoA out of box... they worked flawlessly if they worked... word that i've been hearing as of recent is that most of these supply issues got resolved right around the 8K3A series release...

good boards, all in all... well made and very stable... hehe

[Pace]

I've heard of EPOX having a similar problem to Abit (poor or non-existant QC), and wouldn't buy them either.

At the moment it's MSI or Supermicro for me, and since Supermicro don't overclock (heard the new ones might, but it won't be as configurable as others I'd think), I'd recommend MSI.

I've used either Supermicro, Abit or MSI boards. Out of that, no Supermicro boards have failed (, no Abit boards have survived (of 2), no MSI boards have failed (although I just got my only one a few months ago).