Soyo or Asus

[WayneHu]

Some MBs raise their operating voltage to achieve higher successful rate of overclock. Of course, it has some risks to do this. For example, can your RAM work with such voltage which is more than 3.5v? (They often use 3.65 or higher voltage on your CPU & Memory Bus) Will it damage other components?

I dare not say Asus P2B series are very good overclocking MBs. But they are very stable in operation of normal spec.

--
Celeron 300P@558/2.0v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB,
...


[This message has been edited by WayneHu (edited 27 October 1999).]

[Stringy]

WayneHu, you stated:
"Some MBs raise their operating voltage to achieve higher successful rate of overclock. Of course, it has some risks to do this. For example, can your RAM work with such voltage which is more than 3.5v? (They often use 3.65 or higher voltage on your CPU & Memory Bus) Will it damage other components? "

Umm I've run my Memory, Cache, and AGP all at 3.7v for about 6 months now, no problems, and before that, since I use an Asus it was 3.5 this vs. the usual 3.3v...

to say that the Asus is Stable but not stable at O/C'ed speeds is a Farce, an Asus P2B was the First MoBo to stabily goto 133Mhz FSB while the competitors flunked it even with the same Ram type and CPU... (this was alittle ways back, but true)


Craig

[WayneHu]

So it means you are very lucky!

Can you guarantee others have the same result? (Even though I am currently overclocking, I can't promise other people have the same result...)

Increasing voltage is more danagerous than increasing frequency because the former might result in transistor collaspe. The latter only produce more heat and it depends on the quality of chip. So it shouldn't affect too much about chips's lifetime, except the production process of 0.5 micron in history. (My friend told me this... He works in SiS.)



------------------
Celeron 300P@558/2.0v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB

[DK]

Used P2B for about a year with no problems, overclocked P2-400.
Just got a P3B-F about a month ago, no problems so far and overclocking P3-500.

Because of this, I will buy another at next upgrade.

Derek

[muffynnt]

Asus all the way. I put Asus in the same arena as Matrox for putting quality as a high priority when making products. I would love to have one of their P3B-F with 6 PCI/0 ISA slots. Death to ISA!

[WayneHu]

And...

ASUS's MBs ofern have a long-term BIOS update. For example, his 486 MBs has Y2K BIOS patch... Does other companies do the same thing?

Matrox also does the same thing. My old Millennium I still has driver & bios support...



------------------
Celeron 300P@558/2.0v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB

[Stringy]

WayneHu
"So it means you are very lucky!
Can you guarantee others have the same result? (Even though I am currently overclocking, I can't promise other people have the same result...)"


Well this is not as Critical as Vcore, we are talking about Vi/o which back in the days was one of the more important tweaks to O/C'ing... S7 days when Cache was on MoBo...
I would tell people that any Voltage increase is a Gamble, but so is O/C'ing, But I don't think the raising of Vio is going to injure any hardware... I've used it several time in my O/C'ing tries for other people.. with varying success...

Craig




[This message has been edited by Stringy (edited 28 October 1999).]

[Holerith]

Hmmmm, of the list mentioned (Asus, Soyo, Abit) I've used all but Soyo.

The Abit are nice for overclocking, the Asus tend to be very stable.

I might throw out another candidate for your consideration - Tyan. The support from the company isn't the greatest (since they primarily aim sales at system builders and OEM's) but their boards certainly are as good as Asus in an 'on spec' system.

Supermicro's quality varies widely from board to board, in my experience. EpoX make a nice board as well. For a reasonable board at a bargain price consider Elitegroup.



------------------
Dean
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PDP-11, Dec-writer & ZD-11 Terminal Unit, RSTS-OS

[paulcs]

The BX chipset, in this late stage of its development, has really come into its own. Unless you get unlucky, always a possibility with a complicated device like a motherboard, you really can't go wrong with most of the standard BX boards from the big manufacturers.

If stability is your primary concern, and it should be, you might want to consider both Asus and AOpen. Both companies have great reputations in this regard, and both, interestingly enough, were slow to pick up on the overclocking trend. That's changed now.

However, a lot of people are putting out extremely stable BX boards these days. Even companies that tended to focus on features, rather than stability, have BX boards out that are rock solid in the stability department.

You might want to check out both Anandtech and BXBoards for some reviews.

In addition, you should attempt to get the *latest* revision of whatever board you choose. I also recommend upgrading your BIOS before installing your OS.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Borg]

ASUS !..the best

------------------
PIII450@465,P2b,128mb,Matrox Mill-G400 32SH,SB.Live !(value)...

[WayneHu]

Stringy,

The example is RAM. Not every RAM has such good tolerance... And I just said it could be, but is not absolute.

My friends and I also have the experience of overclock which was successful at first and failed after several months. It doesn't mean it can't function any more, but it indeed results in some un-idenifiable errors. So we try to overclock without any voltage increase of Vio & Vcore... For this reason, I strongly suggest everybody overclock in more safe methods...


------------------
Celeron 300P@558/2.0v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB

[This message has been edited by WayneHu (edited 28 October 1999).]

[This message has been edited by WayneHu (edited 28 October 1999).]

[Hugh G Recshun]

Yeah, put a condom over your CPU before overclocking...