Not sure which setup to get, XP2400+ with Epox 8RDA+ or 2.26p4 with abit BE7?

[Sgt_Strider]

Confuse in which of those 2 setup to get. I have 2 dimms of crucial pc2700 and I'm not sure which one would overclock the highest and give me the most performance. Which one would you get? Thx...

[lefthandedgoat]

I'd go intel. I have been messing with intel and AMD< and I enjoy intel much more, more problem free, just an opinion...

[QuadDamage]

i was also playing with 2.4ghz/2.8 ES / 3.06 chpis form Intel and dozen of AMD chips and i'd say that i enojey AMD much more:D

[Bushboy]

XP2400+ would be a better choice than a 2.26B (I've had both chips) IMO. AMD was usually more problematic with me like N* said, but the XP2400+ didnt cause me any problems whatsoever...8RDA+ is great too :)

[RacerX]

The BE7 undervolts very badly. The AMD setup will kick butt. I have the 8RDA+ its a very nice board. I was running a BE7/1.6a Malay at 16x175fsb with my MSI G4 ti4600 and could only manage 14900 with that setup. With my setup in my sig except a Abit ti4200 I topped out at 14888. I think you get the picture. The BE7 agp voltage is very low also. You would need to do a mod to your card if you wanted the extra voltage where as the 8RDA+ has a AGP voltage up to 1.8v.

Clearly the AMD setup wins here.

[Hardass]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
Confuse in which of those 2 setup to get. I have 2 dimms of crucial pc2700 and I'm not sure which one would overclock the highest and give me the most performance. Which one would you get? Thx...

Need more info, How do you plan to cool chip, are you going to be folding 24/7 with it?

[KingInge2000]

I chosed the 2400+ instead of the 2,53 P IV and @ 2300 MHz the 2400+ declasses my old P IV @ 2.8 GHz in nearly all benches.
What is it 4?

[RichBa5tard]

I ditched my P4 2.53@3.2 Ghz for a XP2400+ & nforce² setup. Glad i did it, the AMD setup is far more fun to overclock. It might me a little slower stock, but much faster and stable at overclocked speeds.

[OPPAINTER]

Yea I find AMD much more fun and challenging. The Intel Overclocks great but then parties over. With AMD you have all the multipliers to play with and more bios adjustments to tweak out untill your perfect, and you never are, so it's one long party with AMD :D

OPP

[RichBa5tard]

Originally posted by OPPAINTER
With AMD you have all the multipliers to play with and more bios adjustments to tweak out untill your perfect, and you never are, so it's one long party with AMD :D

OPP

Indeed, that's a significant plus for AMD procs. If you want to overclock an Intel, you generally need loud cooling to keep it stable at +160FSB. On the other hand, you can run an XP2400+ at 10*200 with silent cooling and still have awesome perfomance.

[Liquid3D]

There you GO, I own a 2400+ and it's potential is only limited by my knowledge, and lack of LN2! Also the potential for 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth from the nForce 2 Dual DDR/Twinbank memory architecture will let you take that memory to new heights.

To reiterate what many have said the BE7 has some serious OCing limitations, here's a quote from Digital-Daily's review:
"The functions for raising voltages on AGP and chipset are missing. This results in poor overclocking potentials, so you can't expect high results. And it turned out that way in practice.
The maximum FSB speed at which the system was running stably was 140 MHz. As a result, the final clock speed of the processor amounted to 2.52 GHz (from the standard 1.8 GHz), which is a medium result (reminding you that this processor specimen was overclocked to over 2.7 GHz). To raise the clock speeds higher than that, we need a much higher raise of the Vcore (up to 1.85V), but the BE7 board restricts it to 1.725V.
The same applies to the memory. Unfortunately, the low maximum Vmem value made it impossible to test the board with memory running at 177 MHz (DDR354) and at the minimum timings."
Link to that review (overclocking/BIOS page): http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/abit-be7-raid/index04.htm

[Sgt_Strider]

If the Abit BE7 sucks, do you think the Abit BD7II would be a better choice? If not what is a good cheap Intel mobo? Sorry to say this but I find it hard to stick with a AMD setup. I'm not sure why but maybe cuz I'm bias and I am falling for Intel :(. I have a xp1600+setup with a Abit KR7A-RAID and its great but I think I want to try the Intel experience...

Btw I just read that the Epox 4PEA doesn't have the 3:4 divider for 533mhz fsb cpu's so does the Abit BD7-II have it? Thx

[Bushboy]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
If the Abit BE7 sucks, do you think the Abit BD7II would be a better choice? If not what is a good cheap Intel mobo? Sorry to say this but I find it hard to stick with a AMD setup. I'm not sure why but maybe cuz I'm bias and I am falling for Intel :(. I have a xp1600+setup with a Abit KR7A-RAID and its great but I think I want to try the Intel experience...

Btw I just read that the Epox 4PEA doesn't have the 3:4 divider for 533mhz fsb cpu's so does the Abit BD7-II have it? Thx

The BD7II is ok, it has the 3:4 but only 2.7v for mem, and the voltage mod is hard. The IT7 is the next step up, but it's about $130 or so new which isn't cheap at all. I think it will be good to try intel to see for yourself which you prefer. However, if your talking strictly performance the 2400+ will be better. You'll have to spend a decent amount of money on the motherboard if you want a good one with features if you want to try Intel.

[dexx]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
If the Abit BE7 sucks, do you think the Abit BD7II would be a better choice? If not what is a good cheap Intel mobo? Sorry to say this but I find it hard to stick with a AMD setup. I'm not sure why but maybe cuz I'm bias and I am falling for Intel :(. I have a xp1600+setup with a Abit KR7A-RAID and its great but I think I want to try the Intel experience...

Btw I just read that the Epox 4PEA doesn't have the 3:4 divider for 533mhz fsb cpu's so does the Abit BD7-II have it? Thx
The BE7 isnt quite that bad. Its 4:5 ratio makes it better than
the BD7-II. Mine runs FSB up to 164MHz and Ive read of others
that are above 170. You can pin trick the p4 to get above 1.7V.
memory and AGP voltages are a bit of an issue.
If I had to choose over again I would have gotten
an Epox 4PEA (3:4 available in new bios) or an Xp2400 +
8RDA

[GreenBeret]

I'd go with the Epox 4PEA and a 2.26B or 1.8A. That board is faster than any board Abit has to offer. As for the AMD choice, I don't see how OCing the AMD is more challenging. It's just as hard as OCing Intel. Just that Intel chips scale higher.

You'll have to spend a decent amount of money on the motherboard if you want a good one with features if you want to try Intel.

So many people say so, but that isn't true. It's only true if you go with ridiculously overpriced Abit or Asus boards. My 4PEA costs me 195 AUD (~105 USD) and the 8RDA+ costs 210 AUD here in Australia. The RAID version of those boards cost about 230~240 AUD. In comparison, the IT7 costs 410 AUD.

The functions for raising voltages on AGP and chipset are missing. This results in poor overclocking potentials, so you can't expect high results.

That is a load of rubbish from Digital-Daily. Any experienced OCer will tell you that fiddling with AGP voltage does nothing to increase your AGP card OC, chipset OC or FSB OC. In fact, it's the other way around. Increasing AGP voltage will just heat up and fry your card.

[Zroc]

Well, imo, you'd have a much nice upgrade path going with the BE7 setup over the 8RDA+ setup. Hyperthreading is a hella-nice thing for actually USING a computer (even if it doesn't make a difference in benches...well, unless you run more than one simultaneously :)) So you'll be able to jump on the 3GHz or 3.2GHz chip when the prices drop down to acceptable levels.

You KNOW you'll be able to pop those big chips with Hyperthreading into your board in the near future, which I think outweighs anything Barton will bring to the table.

I dunno about the 2.26 chip, though. As RacerX pointed out, his 2400+ @ 11.5x210 (nice oc!) 2415 beats a 1.6 at 16x175 2800 (though I don't know what ratio he's running at).
I'd go with a higher muliplier chips...like the 2.4B or 1.8.

Hell, the 1.8 B0 chips I've been getting lately do 18x167 3006 with the stock retail heatsink (doesn't get quieter than that).
Something like that should match up well with anything you could accomplish with the 2400+ air-cooled...and keep you satisified until the 3GHz and 3.2GHz chips get under $200.

THAT's when the real fun begins :)

[GreenBeret]

Hell, the 1.8 B0 chips I've been getting lately do 18x167 3006 with the stock retail heatsink (doesn't get quieter than that).

What s-spec are they ? I'd love to try one of those :)

I'm sure that 1.6A @ 175x16 2800MHz was running 1:1, otherwise the 2412MHz AMD wouldn't be able to beat it. My P4 1.8A at just 2.8GHz (156x18, 3:4 mem) beats my friends 2.5GHz 12.5x200 AXP on KX7-333 in UT2003 (130/70 vs 115/64) and in 3DMark (by about 400 points) with same vid card (Ti500) and same tweaks).

[Zroc]

The last one I had was packdate 10/02/02, Costa Rica, SL63X.

[QuadDamage]

Any experienced OCer will tell you that fiddling with AGP voltage does nothing to increase your AGP card OC, chipset OC or FSB OC. In fact, it's the other way around. Increasing AGP voltage will just heat up and fry your card.

i do not agree with your statement Niko. agp @ 1.8v really helped me to keep my ti4600 running at 93mhz agp locked on Asus NF2 mobo. also, tweaking AMD is more challenging since you have multipliers to play with my friend. on p4 machine you just crank up fsb till it hits the wall and when it hits the wall your fun is over. you've just maxed out your chip, time to go to bed:D. i've been playing around with 3.06 p4 and i can tell you that at 170fsb my "party" was over, lol.

however, it's a diffrent story with ES chips, my previous 2.53ghz did 243fsb offering brutal bandwidth and took me whole nite to find optimal multi/fsb ratio. unfortunately it's hard as hell to get one of these:(