CP: 400mhz? I thought HT moved at well over a 1000.
I mean the base frequency or the "FSB." Granted, you will rarely want to go that high (only really useful with overclocks on low end semprons or vapor condensers), but it's nice to have the option and bodes well for stability at lower speeds.
One board I would advise against is the Asus A8V. We bought two of them at work, and both are randomly powering off.
Or should I say were. They've been replaced with MSI Neo4 boards now, and those are rock solid.
Is that the vanilla one or the deluxe version? I have the deluxe and haven't had any problems with it, but the normal one came out over a year after the deluxe, so it might be different.
Well, the AsRock board looks interesting, but from what I hear there are precisely zero options for memory voltage adjustment, and core voltage is limited to 1.45v tops.
I hear DFI is planning a board based on the ULi chipset. If they stick to their usual plethora of overclocking options, it could be the board to have, especially if you've got a high end AGP card that you don't want to part with just yet. Just having PCI-e and full speed AGP on it is a huge plus if you've got a 6800gt/X800xt in AGP and aren't gonna want to part with it just yet.
Yeah, that Asrock board is basically a budget board that uses an excellent chipset. There have been reports of a BIOS upgrade coming out that's supposed to allow more options, but for now the voltage options are very limited. If DFI is making one, that could well be the ultimate motherboard, as their voltage choices and layouts have traditionally been superior to the other brands.
I think even as purely PCIE platform, this chipset is better than the nF4 ultra, as it seems to beat it by fairly significant margins in some CPU-limited games. The difference in UT2004 is pretty remarkable for a motherboard.
