I've recently purchased some new OCZ PC3200EL dual channel Platinum ed memory with the highly overclockable TCCP chips. Unfortunately i currently only own an ECS 661FX-M motherboard, which doesnt support dual channel and certainly wont allow the kind of overclocks i have planned on my RAM... Could someone recommend me a money-no-object board for my 478 P4 2.8ghz that would allow massive overclocking headroom for many of my components while providing all the latest technology features and just about everything else you might need from a board -already eyeing the DFI Lanparty Pro... The problem is that ive had the processor a while and never tested it, and i dont actually know whether it runs at 533mhz or 800mhz, i cant check the heatspreader because ive already applied AS5...it was bought over ebay... I believe P4b is 533mhz right?? If its one of these i may consider trying to sell it, and going with a high-end a64 Winchester, they're so damn cheap and run cool for they're performance! Would you guys agree, sell it on if its 533mhz, it will bottleneck the ram otherwise, right? In which case, whats the best A64 939 board going?? IYO...
Depending on how much you want to spend, look at Abit's IC7-Max3 or Abit's IS7/IS7-E/IS7-G. The next best thing would be Asus P4C800 or P4P800. The IC7 and P4C800 use the i875P (Canterwood) and the IS7 and P4P800 use the i865PE (Springdale) chipset. The Asus and Abit i865PE boards also contains BIOS mods that make it's performance equal to their i875P big brothers. I've had my IS7-E for about a year now and it just kicks @ss. However, the IC7-Max3 has some sweet cooling features that you might like. I've not used anything recent from DFI, so I can't say how good they are from personal experience. The B chips are Northwood 533MHz FSB parts, and they OC pretty well. There's nothing wrong with having faster DDR when it comes to the P4 since they scale pretty well. Each chip is different, but hitting 3GHz + should be easy. My 2.4B does 3.1Ghz and I'm using aircooling and a slight voltage bump. A 'C' chip would be the 800MHz parts. In the long run, yes, an A64 S939 combo is going to beat the pants off the P4. On the other hand, a new motherboard is going to be cheaper than a new CPU and motherboard. You're looking at $100 or so vs $400-ish. For A64, the MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum is highly regarded, but DFI's nForce 3 250Gb S939 board is also pretty good. Again, I haven't dealt with anything from them in the past 2-3 years (and what I did work with was a basic Pentium III board in class), so I can't vouch for what they have. I'd stick with Asus or Abit besides MSI if you're into overclocking. Gigabyte and Soyo are also pretty good, but they're not really what I'd look at if you want to overclock. While Epox is also regarded for overclocking, they seem to have some serious quality control issues, and I simply wouldn't touch them for the time being.
