Intel Bad Axe 2 + Allendale E4300 = Good?

[Flak_Monkey]

So I've been searching and searching through all these boards and it came down to the Intel Bad Axe 2 or the Abit AW9D-MAX.

It seems the BX2 is the better board so I'm going with it.

My question is, I'm going to be pairing it with an E4300 Allendale CPU which has the 9x multiplier and some G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR-2 PC-6400 RAM.

Now since the e4300 has the 9x multi I'm not going to need to ramp up the FSB too high. I'm looking for about the 400-425 range for the FSB. That would make the CPU in the 3600-3800Mhz range.

My cooling is a Swiftech Apogee waterblock with the Apex kit, so cooling should not be an issue.

How does this all look? Are my hopes of getting in that range with that motherboard unrealistic? I don't care so much if the CPU can't do it as I'll probably be getting a Quad core in about a year or less. This is just my "for now" CPU.

Please lend me your thoughts on this scenario, thank you

 

[MrWizard6600]

975X is actually growing old (110nm), I vote P965, 680i or preferably ICFX 3200.

 

[AndyM]

Seems like a plan, the board will definately do 400-412 stable from my experience. It probably could do higher as well, but I havent worked on that much.

 

[Flak_Monkey]

975X is actually growing old (110nm), I vote P965, 680i or preferably ICFX 3200.

Growing old? Please explain yourself.

I thought the 975X was the newest chipset? Therefore shouldn't it be newer than the P965 chipset? Or am I ill informed.

I've also heard a while back that the 680i did not overclock very well and had lots of bugs, if I were to get a motherboard based on that chipset, which would you suggest? Are all the bugs ironed out of that chipset already?

The only board I know of with the ICFX 3200 chipset is the DFI Lanparty UT ICFX3200 based on the ATi Xpress chipset, is that really any good? [H]'s review didn't get it to overclock that well :/

 

[fsh42na]

Growing old? Please explain yourself.

I thought the 975X was the newest chipset? Therefore shouldn't it be newer than the P965 chipset? Or am I ill informed.

I've also heard a while back that the 680i did not overclock very well and had lots of bugs, if I were to get a motherboard based on that chipset, which would you suggest? Are all the bugs ironed out of that chipset already?

The only board I know of with the ICFX 3200 chipset is the DFI Lanparty UT ICFX3200 based on the ATi Xpress chipset, is that really any good? [H]'s review didn't get it to overclock that well :/

Nope, 965 is the newer than the 975. Next would be the 680i then the 650i. I don't know where the ATI chipset fits in this. Of all the chipsets, I believe the 975 is the most stable, the 965 clocks the highest WITH stability, the 680i is capable of high clocks, but seems to have bugginess. The 650i seems to have pretty good stability and clocks pretty well. The ATI chipset hasn't really taken the world by storm - maybe cuz it took so long for it to be released and when it was Nvidia already had all the attention.

Gawds please chime in and correct me if needed.

I'm probably gonna build a 975x for my stable home pc and use either a 965 or 650i mobo for my gaming rig.

 

[Flak_Monkey]

Nope, 965 is the newer than the 975. Next would be the 680i then the 650i. I don't know where the ATI chipset fits in this. Of all the chipsets, I believe the 975 is the most stable, the 965 clocks the highest WITH stability, the 680i is capable of high clocks, but seems to have bugginess. The 650i seems to have pretty good stability and clocks pretty well. The ATI chipset hasn't really taken the world by storm - maybe cuz it took so long for it to be released and when it was Nvidia already had all the attention.

Gawds please chime in and correct me if needed.

I'm probably gonna build a 975x for my stable home pc and use either a 965 or 650i mobo for my gaming rig.

Alright, this is basically the view I've had too.

Why would I need to get a P965 chipset with the Allendale with it's 9x multiplier, it seems like a waste because I'd only get up to about 420 or so FSB and that board's capable of a lot more.

The 680i is still a little buggy it seems like and I heard the 975X chipset is faster clock-for clock than the P965 chipset.

So my choice would still be a board with the 975X chipset right? or am I missing some logic here.

 

[MrWizard6600]

Growing old? Please explain yourself.

I thought the 975X was the newest chipset? Therefore shouldn't it be newer than the P965 chipset? Or am I ill informed.

yeah, as said above, Intel introduced 975X before 965P. 965P is supposed to be the younger brother to 975X but, in many areas it is not.

It would seem crossfire isn't even able to saturize 4 pci-e lanes (and here Nvidia is making a fuss about how 680i supports 16) let alone 8 or 16. The performance differance between Crossfire 16X, 4X and Crossfire 16X, 16X is minimal to say the least. This is valid to you because late revision 965P motherboards support Crossfire 16X,4X.

I've also heard a while back that the 680i did not overclock very well and had lots of bugs, if I were to get a motherboard based on that chipset, which would you suggest? Are all the bugs ironed out of that chipset already?

Tell the "poor overclocking performance" to my 504FSB.

The bugs from what I hear are certainly not ironed out just yet, but this motherboard from my experiance is bug free, although it does overclock oddly (it just flat out doesnt like some numbers, and I have the "Cold Post failure" problem which I explained in full in this thread).

The only board I know of with the ICFX 3200 chipset is the DFI Lanparty UT ICFX3200 based on the ATi Xpress chipset, is that really any good? [H]'s review didn't get it to overclock that well :/

That is the only board on the chipset, you gotta remember it was nearly scrapped (AMD making a chipset for rival company Intel? Too many assumptions can be made from such a move). However, they were too far along in production to just throw it away, the plan was to call it Intel Xpress 200 Crossfire Edition. They then realized there was no [H]ard|Core Ati chipset in the Intel market, so they re-marketed it as Xpress 3200 Intel edition. Then AMD bought ATI, so they stopped all futher R&D on the board. The things to be researched that were scrapped were dual 16X crossfire, and more lanes for the physics slot, currently its 3 mechanical PCI-e 16X slots support just as many PCI-e lanes as 975X, and in the same configuration as 975X.

Anand managed to get 507 X 6 on there setup, I would call that not to shabby, and they were using a beta bios! It's great because its Memory Controller is completly a-syncronous. 680i has a huge bank of ratios, when you tell your ram to run at ____ Mhz, it comes up with (in price-is-right fasion) the closest number it can. This is GREAT because it means you dont have to spend $900 on ram to get an amazing overclock. HOWEVER, since your build includes a proc with an already high multiplier (and as such a lower FSB overclock), your RAM (DDR2 800) should have no trouble handling whatever overclock your chipset is capible of, as such, maybe P965 or 680i is a better choice.

I still maintain you should avoid 975X, as yes it could make 420 FSB, but the 3 listed chipsets can definatly make it.

Anyways, they all have pros and Cons:

If your a hard core graphics user, who plans on going multi-GPU, and need a platform thats ready to run the X3k series or 9 series at full speed (praying Intel doesnt force PCI-e2 on us, why would intel do such a thing? I have no idea, but they might) you should go 680i or ICFX 3200. 680i can supply an absolutly MONSTROUS ammount of bandwidth to the graphics cards, via Link Boost (16 x 1.25 = 20, meaning linkboost gives 20 effective PCI-e lanes to EACH card). Also, something to take into consideration about these two chipsets, each are able to use 3rd card physics solutions!

If you want stabillity in overclocking, and a single Graphics solution, P965 is for you.

All three are feature rich, supporting 6 Sata (although ICFX has two Sata ports running on a PCI bus :S) minimum, gigabit lan, etc.

sorry for the spelling and grammar, I know its bad, 1 AM and I'm tired.

 

[Flak_Monkey]

Well thank you for that, very helpful!

I'm a single graphics card user through and through. I've never used SLi/Crossfire and never plan to use it. I mean why have two cards that are as strong as the one newest?


So it sounds like from what you layed out that I should go for something based off the P965 chipset.

I wonder though, I really like the sound of that feature in the 680i board that resets the BIOS if the board doesn't POST. Sounds very useful for overclocking adventures.

Do you think it would be a waste for me to get a 680i board to use with just a single graphics card? Or should I just stick with a P965 chipset.