Fastest Mobo for a P4 660 = ?

FatRakoon · 9 Sep 2006 at 19:25

Ok, I sold off my P4 3.6 Prescott 660 the other week.

The other day I got it back and instead I gave them a knocked up Sempron 3100 in a cheap and nasty ECS Nf3 Mobo... Today they said that the Sempron was a delight to use, and is so much quicker at doing things... Yea, the CPU is way slower I know, but the system as a whole does thigns far, far quicker.

Another issue that I would like to know, but will post properly elsewhere is that I cannot connect to tiscali DialUp for longer than a few minutes, yes other dialups are fine? - go figure?

Anyway, I am left with the Prescott 660 Again

Last time I had it a few weeks back, I found that disk access was far too slow, pretty much 20 or 30 times slower than the PC it was set to replace, for example, I loaded up a numbner of apps all at once, on both the P4 and on a NewCastle 3000, and I was able to load them all up, close them all back down again, shutdown and restart the PC and re-load them all back up, again, all before the P4 was able to display the first window of the first app.

I have done a number of different installs and nothign helped at all, I have tried various drivers too, but to no avail.

Now, the CPU itself is fine... It clocks very well, and today I took it to 4.2Ghz so thats a real peach as far as I am concerned, however, while this makes it a monster CPU, its still uselessly slow at everything else, due to what I can only describe as a sh1tty motherboard... Or Mother"Bored" at any rate.

So, in one last effort before I chuck the thing away and use a real PC ( yet another Point to AMD as far as I can see )... Given that I really dont care about costs, what is the best Motherboard I can get for it?

I want it to be fast straight off the bat, and clocking, while not essential, would be a bonus.

Given my experience with Intel and AMD, the Chipset will not be intel... While they are supposed to be reliable, they are certainly poor. and NForce seem to be the babies for AMD, however, I have seen quite a number of NForce Intel Boards, so...

Anyone willing to shed some light on this for me as I know absolutely sod all about Intels you see....

Many thanks in advance.

Massive Attack · 9 Sep 2006 at 19:44

probably the gigabyte DS4, its good for core 2 duos so i cant see it being a problem with a P4

snowdog · 9 Sep 2006 at 20:05

my asus p5ld2 does ok for a 630, can take upto 4.4 ghz on air.
I renember the asus p5wdh did 4.7 for some guy on it, so i'd get that, its also best mobo for future conroe 4mb.

Nforce is total junk for pentium 4's, you should stay away from nforce for pentiums, intels 975x is a bit faster as nforce 4 and 5 series while it overclocks a lot better ( nforce 4 hardly overclocks at all)

Also what do you mean with slow, when i run my 3 ghz p4 @ 4ghz its way faster in everything as an athlon64 3000+ venice i have too.
Also beats my m8es 3500 in about 90% of the benchmarks of pcmark04

Also stay away from semprons and celerons!

if you dotn want anything slow.

FatRakoon · 10 Sep 2006 at 14:20

LOL As I said, I dont know with Intel CPUs you see, cos every Intel I have had, has been a dog.

The CPUs have been ok, and yes, this 3.6 even at stock, is giving out seriously high benchmarks, but where it falls over, is with things where the motherboard or other devices are to blame... I have been having a laugh this morning, cos I got an AMD K6/2 450 that starts up, loads Office 2000, and StarOffice 8, then shuts the pc down, al lbefore the P4 can load up just office.

In fact, before I can type anythign on the P4, I can start the AMD back up and re-load both Office 2K and StarOffice 8 al lover again.

Thats utterly pathetic, and its somehting that I have not yet been able to cure no matter what I do or try, or what OS I use.

The CPU however, is a little darling and if I could onlyt sort the rest of it out, then I should in theory, have a great little system for knocking about.

Also, I have, with my many many many tests, found out, that my NewCastle 3000 @ 2.4Ghz is almost exactly on par with the CPU. I forget the figures right now, but a 1MB SuperPI, the P4 was 1 second quicker, and a 2MB, the AMD was 2 secodns quicker... So, roughly on par.

You really dont want to know how poorly the Intel was against the AMD when it came to loading loads of apps, but when I said previously, that its 20-30 times slower, I was probably doing the Intel a favour... Its worse than that!

Anyway, ho hium...

NForce no good for Intel then? - Ok, not a problem, they are good for AMD, and I would go for nothing less, but saying that... I have had some AMD Dogs of Motherboards too, so...

Gigabyte Boards?

Interestingly, I have had some awful GB Boards, anmd a few good uns too!

My last was a Socket A NF2 Board... It was great I suppose until I wanted to clock, and then it was poor.... I might look into that one though.

Staying away from Sempron / Celeron.

LOL

Trust me mate... I know.

The Semprons are a funny breed... A While back I was thinking of trying one out, and I saw a 3100 and a 3300, so I thgouth get them both and have a look... The 3300 is as far as I can tell, on pat with a ZX81 or maybe thats putting the ZX81 into a worse category than it already is!??

The 3100 isnt too bad and I still have one of those in a ... Oh, hang on, thats a GigaByte too! - A K8VT800M ( Ok, I do have a gigabyte board then )

Its ok, nothign wrong with it, but I dont do anythign strenuous on it at all... Its just one of my mess about PCs - if I kill it, who cares kind of thing.

Nah, my main PCs have at least a 512k cache, the slowest being a Newcastle 3000, which, as I said is on par with that P4 3.6, and in every benchtest I give it, it also seems to lose out with the P4 showing better results, but in the real world, when it comes to doing proper stuff, or playing games even, the AMD shines through in a big way... Loading levels up many many times quicker, not suffering from stuttering, and well, just being far better overall, but as you say, slower at benches.

This I recon though, is only down to a shabby Mobo, which the onbly way to find out if thats true or now, is simply to replace the board... Only then will I really find out.

Cheers all.