OC & Stability: ASRock vs. EPoX

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andrew.gullans

Historically, Epox has made roxolidly-stable, highly over-clockable
motherboards, while Asrock has provided cheap (but often innovative)
products as Asus's value branch. Asrock in the past has not been known
for stability or oc'ability, but their 939SLI32-eSATA2 gets glowing
reviews for stability and a modest nod from the overclocking community
for stable HT speeds up into the high two-hundreds.

I've been reading reviews on both the ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 and EPoX
EP-9U1697GLI ULi m1697 motherboards, and, interestingly enough, it
seems that the highest stable overclocks on the Epox board have been
reduced from the mid-300s (months ago) to the high 200s (recently).
Did Epox switch out good caps for bad to push down costs? Did nVidia
pressure ULi to have boardmakers using its chips reduce their
originally way-better-than-nForce4-overclockability? I remember seeing
reviews that showed stable overclocks at 333 (which is totally sweet)
and up to 400 with a peltier cooler. Hmm. Now, it looks like the
maximum overclocks people are getting with the Epox board are in ASRock
neighborhood (250...274). What's up with that? I have an itch to OC
an Opty165 to 2.999 Ghz using 9 * 333 (which will allow 3*333=999HTT),
and (maybe) DDR666. Wtf is up, eh? Would I be better with ASRock
board (future migration to AM2, more PCI-E lanes, similar OC and
stability)?
 
Historically, Epox has made roxolidly-stable, highly over-clockable
motherboards, while Asrock has provided cheap (but often innovative)
products as Asus's value branch. Asrock in the past has not been known
for stability or oc'ability, but their 939SLI32-eSATA2 gets glowing
reviews for stability and a modest nod from the overclocking community
for stable HT speeds up into the high two-hundreds.

I've been reading reviews on both the ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 and EPoX
EP-9U1697GLI ULi m1697 motherboards, and, interestingly enough, it
seems that the highest stable overclocks on the Epox board have been
reduced from the mid-300s (months ago) to the high 200s (recently).
Did Epox switch out good caps for bad to push down costs? Did nVidia
pressure ULi to have boardmakers using its chips reduce their
originally way-better-than-nForce4-overclockability? I remember seeing
reviews that showed stable overclocks at 333 (which is totally sweet)
and up to 400 with a peltier cooler. Hmm. Now, it looks like the
maximum overclocks people are getting with the Epox board are in ASRock
neighborhood (250...274). What's up with that? I have an itch to OC
an Opty165 to 2.999 Ghz using 9 * 333 (which will allow 3*333=999HTT),
and (maybe) DDR666. Wtf is up, eh? Would I be better with ASRock
board (future migration to AM2, more PCI-E lanes, similar OC and
stability)?
Click to expand...

I can't answer all of your questions but I can tell you what I am
running. I am running an Opteron 148 OC to 2746 on an Asrock
Dual Sata 939 board. Right now I'm running at 306x9 but have had it up
to 311x9 stable. I have 1 gig of Mushkin PC3200 Ram 2-2-2-6 running at
2T (for stability). My system is solid as a rock. I have an Artic Cooler
64 Pro and my idle temp is 36c and it seems to max out during games (ie
Fear, HL2) at 41c. I have always used Epox boards but Epox didn't have
what I wanted back at the first of this year when I upgraded. If the
EP-9U1697 board had been around I probably would have gone with that one
due to my Epox experience. But I will say that I am extrememly please
with the Asrock board. I have even done the voltage mod which worked
great. But I'm now back down to stock voltage and even at my overclock
everything runs very stable.

Bob
 
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