Decent mobo?

[Cook_1]

ECS K7VTA3 V8.0

Slowly but surely building a system, and started getting some parts before I found TechIMO and RR so I ended up with this board. Going to be using a Athlon XP 2500+ cpu with it and going to try to moderatly overclock it. So question is, is this a decent board to try it with or shouldn't I even bother to try it?

[John Prophet]

the best thing to do is find a review..and they r plenty for that board http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h325d.htm

and

http://www.hwextreme.com/reviews/mot...a3/index.shtml

where the quote at the end sort of sums it up

"The overclocking tests were not that successful. I didn't manage to get a stable operating speed at 1000 MHZ. The COM kept crashing after a few 3D mark runs. This clearly indicates that overclocking is a NO-NO on this board. One other feature on this motherboard was certainly a good addition to it is the PC Health Status in the system BIOS. This feature, which is mostly found on those high-end motherboards, helped me a lot in monitoring my temperature. Especially during overclocking"

In general ECS boards arent really made for overclocking..at least not the ones from a couple years back (Im not sure about now)..they are more made for OEM type system builders who just need a basic stable board....

I wouldnt get my hopes up toooo much about o'clocking that board....maybe look for a used Abit or something with a lot more overclocking settings in the BIOS.

JP

[Cook_1]

Thanks JP, I have ran a google search on it, came up with a lot of V 2.0 and V 6.0 but wondered how the V 8.0 differed between the two of them performance wise with over clockability.

[John Prophet]

my guess is that v8 probably just added support for newer processors..but I doubt it gave it much more overclockability.....one thing you can do is look in the bios and see how many settings it has...for instance is the fsb adjustable by 1mhz steps? doe sit have any voltage adjustments? (I seriously doubt it) and does it have any dividers and "locks" (for keeping the pci clock etc stable while upping the fsb)...again I doubt it....

that doesnt make it a bad board...but its probably just not an overclocker...

[Cook_1]

I'll have to look into finding another cheap board then, managed to get me a very good chip that should overclock well.

[Cook_1]

Oh and, know of any moderatly priced boards that would work well with my cpu?

[John Prophet]

I dont know of any to reccomend off the top of my head but there are sooo many good ones out there now for athlons....for overclockability id look for an Abit or maybe EPOX....check on anandtech sale forum..there r always some good buys on there...used boards for pretty cheap...ram etc etc

http://forums.anandtech.com/categori...=45&entercat=y

for example a possibility http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...d1=motherboard

Ill be honest..I didnt see as many motherboards as I thought..I see a lot of peeps looking to BUY boards...

it helps at anand sale forum to search for "motherboards" (or whatever) to keep from having to look thru every thread etc

[Cook_1]

Yeah, I was looking at them and also hardware forum (I know I got the name wrong) but niether of them will except the kind of email addy I use, so kinda sol on those ones. I'll keep my eye out for a used Abit though, thanks JP.

[filipino]

hmmm if it is your first time to overclock be very careful you might end up frying your mobo and cpu gather more info and help. most people here do overclock heard they used Abit motherboard and others. good for over clocking. ECS has new mobo for overclocking and heard you can do overclocking on windows anyway good luck!

[fpantovich]

The Abit NF7-S v2.0 is a great OCer for XP CPUs....also, maybe the Asus A7N8X, or even the EPOX 8RDA3+...all are great OCers and very stable boards from what I've heard...I'm using the NF7-S v2.0 and have had no problems OCing any CPU that I have had my hands on since I've owned the board...as for the board you have, I would maybe try to see if the board is at all a decent OCer just to get the OC that you want to achieve...
also, the XP2500 that you purchased, 2 questions about it, 1. is it a mobile CPU, 2. if not, then how long ago did you buy it? The reasons that I'm asking this, is because the current XP's that are not mobile versions are multiplier locked completely, which means you will be restricted to an FSB OC, so I hope you have some great quality RAM...anyways, good luck with it all...