Motherboard philosophy...opinions appreciated!

[BlazingArrow]

Hello everyone...So i've been running my core 2 duo system for about three days now. I have to say that I couldn't be happier with the overall performance increase since switching to the core 2, however all in all I am a little surprised by my overclocking results. I have come to the conclusion that the only culprit that it could really be is the motherboard. I have the P5W DH Deluxe, and I am considering returning it for the Gigabyte DQ6...

I used to have an Abit AA8XE 925XE board, with a P4 670 on it. I couldn't get the thing to overclock at all! I ended up getting a P5WD2-premium, and instantly my CPU overclocked 100% better then the abit board. When I got the asus I noticed how much better the architecture was, and the over all build. To me, it was obvious simply by LOOKING at the two boards why the ASUS clocked so much better...

I guess i'm presenting this to you all in the forum, a question: How well can you tell a products performance based on how it looks? The main reason why I bring this up is because I am trying to decide on whether I should return my motherboard for the DQ6. RIght now I cant get my system to run Prime95 stable over 385 x 8. I can run most benchmark programs, but not prime stable. To overclock this bad boy, it seems i have to give it tons of voltage with anything above 370.

Tying this back to my topic, i've come to the conclusion that the gigabyte board is 'visually' a better quality board, and so far by tests seems to be a better overclocking board. Would it be dumb, or premature of me to return my asus for a DQ6??

[Plaicd]

Only way to find out is try it :)

You might want to try to figure out what this thread is about thou as I see in your signature your memory looks to use 4-4-4 timings.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=109170

[Absolute_0]

You've tried increasing Vmch? Should be able to push more than 385 FSB.

[theteamaqua]

allendale : 965p boards

conroe: i975 boards

u made the wrong choice. go change it

it makes sens to me b/c otherwise no one is gonna buy 965 boards or allendale. i think this is part of intel's strategy ...

PS: i have seen E6600 OC like crap on DS3, pacman said he was only able to boot at 3.5GHz with E6600 + DS3

[BlazingArrow]

You've tried increasing Vmch? Should be able to push more than 385 FSB.
yes, I have gone up to 1.65 which is max and doesn't stabalize at FSB over 420

allendale : 965p boards

conroe: i975 boards

u made the wrong choice. go change it

it makes sens to me b/c otherwise no one is gonna buy 965 boards or allendale. i think this is part of intel's strategy ...

PS: i have seen E6600 OC like crap on DS3, pacman said he was only able to boot at 3.5GHz with E6600 + DS3

thanks for the reply! I do agree with you...as I think about it, my theory is that the 975X work better with the Conroe because they have a higher multiplier, and higher total clock speeds. Where as the allendales ahve higher FSB and a lil lower top clock speeds. I believe the 965 are set up for higher FSB speeds, thus suiting the allendales.


I am going to call newegg tomorrow and do a switch for a PQ6...