Recommend a socket 775 mobo that supports 45nm CPUs

[E-66]

I've got an Intel Wolfdale E8400 on its way to me and need a motherboard and RAM.

I've read about these CPUs quite a bit and some people have reported that their motherboards haven't recognized them correctly. I don't know if these were older boards that didn't have a BIOS update available yet at the time the users wrote about their experiences, or if some socket-775 boards just won't work with them.

Overclocking isn't something I've had a lot of interest in in the past, but in reading about these CPUs they seem to have so much headroom for overclocking that I'd like to do some in a conservative way. I read an article on Tom's Hardware specifically about overclocking the E8000 series and I'd like to follow their approach and overclock the FSB to 400MHz and match it up with some DDR2-800 memory to keep it running synchronously with the FSB.

I'd like some recommendations for a motherboard with integrated video that would suit my needs and allow me to do the basic overclocking I'm interested in. I'm mostly clueless about things like specific chipsets and why someone would favor one over another so I need the help from those of you who know a lot more about these things than I do. Thanks.

Edited April 14, 2008 by E-66

[puntoMX]

No board with onboard video will OC really good, but Intel will release there new G45 in a few months from now, giving you a 10 Unified shader processors . For now it’s the G35 or G33 that you can buy.

But, if you have a case for a "full" ATX board then a GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L with a cheap PCI-E video card will do way more in performance and overclocking!

[E-66]

I wasn't aware that mobos with onboard video didn't overclock well. Why is that? Punto, this is ironic - I've never had a mobo with onboard video before, and you're the one who convinced me to quit avoiding them. Now you tell me they don't overclock well. Ugh!

[nmX.Memnoch]

I don't know that integrated video is going to affect overclocking all that much...but what's the point if you have integrated video anyway?

I have to second the option to get a good P35 based motherboard and a cheap PCIe video card. You can get 8600GT based cards for less than $100US. For that matter, you can get a decent 9600GT based card for ~$150US. Either of them will be better than integrated video.

[puntoMX]

I wasn't aware that mobos with onboard video didn't overclock well. Why is that? Punto, this is ironic - I've never had a mobo with onboard video before, and you're the one who convinced me to quit avoiding them. Now you tell me they don't overclock well. Ugh!

That depends on what you do! Now you are talking about OCing the E8400 as high as you can, so you need other stuff for that, nothing more .

EDIT: by the way, the mobo I advised you here cost about 89USD, ad a simple PCI-E 64bit card on it and you will pay the same price as a board with G33/G35 chipset.

[E-66]

I don't know that integrated video is going to affect overclocking all that much...but what's the point if you have integrated video anyway?

I don't know what that means? When Punto said that boards with integrated video don't overclock too well I thought he meant that overclocking would affect the integrated video, not the other way around?

That depends on what you do! Now you are talking about OCing the E8400 as high as you can, so you need other stuff for that, nothing more .

No no, I have no interest in overclocking it as high as I can. I don't want to have to do all kinds of extra cooling just to keep the thing from blowing up. I just want to overclock it a little bit, as shown in the link to the Tom's Hardware article in my first post. For 'basic' overclocking they simply upped the FSB from 333MHz to 400MHz and took their E8500 CPU from 3.16GHz to 3.8GHz and reported that it ran completely stable. Doing that to the E8400 would take it from 3.0 to 3.6GHz. That's all I'm really interested in doing.

It's not that I *need* to overclock, but since these chips seem to overclock so well I figured I can either leave it stock and get DDR2-667 memory or 'mildly' overclock it and get DDR2-800 memory. Just seems like the latter would be a better choice since I'd get an extra 600MHz out of it.

EDIT: I have no problem getting a separate graphics card, Punto. I've never had integrated graphics before, but the last time I was planning a computer build you and I had an ongoing conversation about it and you suggested I go with onboard video since I wasn't (and still am not) a gamer. I ended up not going with onboard graphics because I had an ATI Radeon 9250 card (AGP) I had never used so I ended up using that.

I'm not familiar with ATI's X series of cards, the 9250 has been the 'best' video card I've ever used, so should I assume the X700 series that the Sapphire card is based on is even better? It's only $20 too and has all 5 star reviews. Getting a card like that gives me more motherboard choices too.

Edited April 10, 2008 by E-66

[kz26]

Actually, the NVIDIA nForce 630i/MCP73 boards are pretty sweet stuff. LGA775 45nm support, 1333MHz FSB, SATA2 + RAID 0/1/5 with PATA, integrated GeForce 7 graphics, DVI and/or HDMI, SPDIF, GigE, and heck, even eSATA!

Be assured that the onboard GeForce will beat the crap out of any Intel's GMA chips.

Take a look at this board, the XFX MG-630i-7109:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813141007

Oh, and not to mention great overclocking

Edited April 10, 2008 by kz26

[puntoMX]

Be assured that the onboard GeForce will beat the crap out of any Intel's GMA chips.

No they don’t, the next gen will. Even there highest clocked 630MHz 7150 GPU will not outperform onboard Intel, even AMDs 690 series for AMD CPUs will do better still. The nVidia GPU has just more features, that’s true.

[E-66]

I see motherboard specs like Memory Standard: DDR2 1066.

What exactly does this specification mean? Is it the max speed ram the board supports w/o overclocking?

Is it ok to use DDR2-800 in a board with a 1066 spec? I don't want to overclock my memory, just the FSB.

Is using DDR2-800 in a motherboard with a DDR2-800 memory standard the same

as using DDR2-800 in a motherboard with a DDR2-1066 memory standard as far as performance goes?

Edited April 10, 2008 by E-66

[E-66]

Another question: at what point do PCIe video cards require a dedicated power connector from the power supply?

Can I assume the inexpensive Sapphire card you linked me to doesn't require one?

[nmX.Memnoch]

When Punto said that boards with integrated video don't overclock too well I thought he meant that overclocking would affect the integrated video, not the other way around?

No, he definitely meant that the integrated video would affect how much you could overclock.

It's not that I *need* to overclock, but since these chips seem to overclock so well I figured I can either leave it stock and get DDR2-667 memory or 'mildly' overclock it and get DDR2-800 memory. Just seems like the latter would be a better choice since I'd get an extra 600MHz out of it.

Just realize that overclocking has the potential of reducing the life of the CPU and/or other components. If you're not gaming or running anything else CPU intensive todays CPUs are plenty fast enough without overclocking them any. For that matter, overclocking them isn't even gaining gamers that much more in the way of performance right now. It's not like the days of the Celeron 300A where getting 450MHz or 504MHz out of it was a huge jump in performance for the entire system for no extra cost at all.

I'm not familiar with ATI's X series of cards, the 9250 has been the 'best' video card I've ever used, so should I assume the X700 series that the Sapphire card is based on is even better?

The X700 is a generation newer than your current 9250. Your 9250 was more of an entry-level type card not really meant for gaming. The X700 was more of a mainstream type part meant for the casual/occassional gamer. It's not the latest generation, but that shouldn't matter since you aren't gaming. Even if you were, you'd still be able to play the previous generation of games with decent frame rates on the X700.

Another question: at what point do PCIe video cards require a dedicated power connector from the power supply? Can I assume the inexpensive Sapphire card you linked me to doesn't require one?

The X700 doesn't require additional power. The PCIe slot provides more power than an AGP slot does so additional power isn't required until you get to the higher end products.

[puntoMX]

When Punto said that boards with integrated video don't overclock too well I thought he meant that overclocking would affect the integrated video, not the other way around?

No, he definitely meant that the integrated video would affect how much you could overclock.

That´s right, you have to remember taht in most cases you OC the Video core too.

[puntoMX]

This is not directly directed to you nmX.Memnoch, but this is what I would like to say:

I do OC as much as I can (10% less then stable, so not 3.66GHz but 3.33Gz for my setup) to play the latest games on a not so powerful Video card, but then, I make big jumps from 2.0 to 3.33GHz (RAM 800 to 1000MHz with the same or better timings then stock) and still on my OCed 7200GS (yeah, don’t start please ).

Sure it lowers life of components, but most of us will not use the components more then 2 years. To bring an E8400 to 3.6GHz will not require more voltage in most cases, so I would say it would have no negative effect at all to set it 20% over its stock speed. Also a P35 can handle everything just fine, even with tight RAM/chipset timings and the stock cooling .

By the way, that Celeron 300A idea, that never stopped. I started with 486DX2 50MHz to get them on 80MHz, then the biggest OCer after that was the Pentium pro 180 that could hit twice the stock speed by a voltage mod (as the design was not 3.3 but 5volt) and brought it over 300Mhz . Then there was the Celeron 2 600Mhz, way up to 1130MHz. These days we have the E1200 and the E21xx series that OC to twice the stock speed, and with tight RAM/chipset timings you will get less performance loss because of the smaller cache, and that’s in contradiction to other sites that say that a CPU with 1MB shared second level cache doesn’t give you any thing more over 3GHz.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Oh I'm not saying that there aren't gains in performance to be had. My point was that if you aren't gaming or running a distributed computing app then the gains aren't as immediately "visible". IE/Firefox is only going to open so fast...

Back in the days of the Celeron 300A, getting a good overclock out of it was immediately noticeable in anything you did on the system. Going from 2GHz to 3GHz doesn't give the same feeling in general system performance.

And yes, I know what you mean about the 486's. My first adventure in overclocking was with a 486DX 33MHz to 40MHz. It ended up frying the motherboard after several months.

Edited April 10, 2008 by nmX.Memnoch

[puntoMX]

Back in the days of the Celeron 300A, getting a good overclock out of it was immediately noticeable in anything you did on the system. Going from 2GHz to 3GHz doesn't give the same feeling in general system performance.

That’s true, office apps will do nothing really faster, but multicore will when you open more apps at the same time. But hey, in this case there is nothing to lose .

And yes, I know what you mean about the 486's. My first adventure in overclocking was with a 486DX 33MHz to 40MHz. It ended up frying the motherboard after several months.

For real, how did you manage that? I must say that I was scared to try running my Pentium pro at 5volt as well and swapping out some components too from the motherboard; but it worked and kept working with the big amplifier cooling blocks on it, even working so good hat I started my own business with it in 1997 .