chipsets

[Merlin]

Here are some of the available NVidia chipsets for an AMD Micro ATX setup. Could someone please explain briefly which is better??
I belive these are all Nforce....7050, 6150, 6100,560, 570 Ultra, 590, and then the 690 series I have seen both G and V and I think there are other 690 boards as well but G and V are all that I saw today then in the middle of all that was one lone AMD 580X chipset board?? Like I said these are all Micro ATX boards except the red ones, I included the red ones becaese I now they are all good ATX chipsets. IF possible could someone tell me which way I should go? The 690 are the most visible are they close to the 570 or not really? Also is it worth it to go with an AM2+ board IF it does nothave PCI-X 2.0?

[Apoptosis]

I have a 690G in my HTPC, but the 780G is faster and is public next week.

[dgood]

Ooh does that mean we get to see more in depth reviews of the 780g series of motherboards in a week? I'm really interested in them as they seem like they could make for some interesting builds, I'm also even considering one as a way to make an htpc. (have to put endeavor off another couple months with the purchase of a new bike). Look what I found on CLUBIT. http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4830739# (AMD 780G Motherboard).

[Merlin]

Sweet! Thanks for the link that is the board I have been looking for. Now to save up for it and the other parts.

[dgood]

I don't however think the 780G is supposed to be up yet though merlin. Only clubit has one for sale so far.

[Merlin]

no worries mate. It will be a few months before I can buy anyway so by then they will be out and tested some. It sounds like a sweet chipset especially when I will be upgrading from a GForce 4

[Methious]

It looks pretty sweet, lotta new technology on the Matx board. I checked it out for the heck of it and was impressed that it has all the new features of larger boards. For a media center pc it has a lot of advantages.

[Merlin]

I am just tired of being forced to "find" a place for a massive tower case so I thought I would go the mATX route. Since I am not much of an overclocker heat should not be a problem.

[Methious]

That one should be a good choice then, it has all the new tech in the M3A series premium boards, just fewer ports and stuff. Never an issue with me. Half the bells and whistles never get used. Current series of AMD you wouldn't get enough heat from OC to worry about if you did. I usually just OC up to where stock voltage will let me and run 24/7 at that. Safe that way.

[Merlin]

when people say to increase FSB then test for stability what is the test they run and in what increments do you increase??

[Methious]

I go up to 220 out of the gate, then try for post, most boards will go that far without voltage adjustments. You might have to up vcore or vdimm or both one notch depends on the board/chip.

Then Orthos, or OCCT for a half hour. Lately on the 7XX series AMD chips, AMD Overdrive. It has temps, voltages, settings and stability testing all in one, but only for the AMD 7xx chip set. It's crud for auto overclock but reports temps and volts accurately. OCCT is probably the fastest to detect instability.

Then after stability at 220 I notch up 5 at a time and retest. After about 225 and up voltages have to increase. Ram,vdimm, vcore. When it needs more volts I up all 3, then test, then go in and lower one at a time until I find the one (or two or all) that needed to be upped. At some point you might need to up the North Bridge voltage as fsb speed and ram speed are linked and if the ram speed goes up to far you need more NB volts. That's what makes AMD OCing more interesting, more variables.

You also need to lower Hypertransport from 5X to 4X if you OC very much, from 4X to 3X farther on in the OC.

Then usually the last variable, ram divider, if your really clocking up, you might have to loosen the timings on the ram, and or set a divider. Like 800 Mhz ram, you might have to set it to run at 667 in bios, then with the OC bring it back up to and past 800. You have to find a balance.

I'd rather have a milder OC with tighter timings, than a higher OC with looser timings for every day use. Benchmarking heck with the timing go for straight out CPU speed and ram speed, benches love that.

[Merlin]

mine is an Nforce 4 chipset....look at my sig that has all my info ...stock cooling as well....still same stability testing software??

[Methious]

Yea same stability software with the exception of Amd Overdrive it's for amd 7xx chipsets only.

It's kinda bad for stable over clocks, but you might be able to use Ntune on auto tune to see how far the FSB is stable in it's estimation, then go in and bios set it and adjust from there. Do a restore point first though. (really should do at least that before any OC, I do that and a Ghost backup to a separate partition)

[Merlin]

I tried going up to 220 on the FSB and the OS would not load. I think I am just going to leave well enough alone. I plan on upgrading to a socket AM2+ and a x2 6400 in the near future so I can hang on to what I have till then.

[Merlin]

I was wondering why the 780G chipset isn't more widely available? The only MOBO I have seen it on as far as for sale is the Micro ATX from Gigabyte that ClubIT has. I did also see it on a J&W ATX board??Who the heck is J&W and it supposedly OCed to over 1 GIG...no clue what that means exactly but I have never heard of the MOBO maker before nor do I know which number of the many that measure a PCs computing speed the 1 GIG overclock is refering to but mostly I don't get IF its soo fast why does only one online retailer have it and then only one MOBO maker in only one form factor??


oops sorry I just saw on NewEgg that they now have them from Asus and Giga as well as ECS. the questions about J&W still stand...

[hnzw_rui]

Give it time. They just released the 780G today.

The blurb on the legitreviews preview mentioned that J&W is only now trying to get into the North American market. A Google search came up with the following: http://www.jwele.com/about.php

Why are they mostly MicroATX? My guess is because the target market is the HTPC crowd and not gamers. Sure, it might be fine for casual gaming, but most gamers would still opt for a more powerful discrete graphics card.

Not sure what the 1G comment is for. Maybe they overclocked the integrated Radeon 3200 graphics from 500 MHz to 1 GHz?