i was happy when i learned about the eqs rs480 boards being released, however (like almost every other manufacturer) there was no provision for overclocking. right now i've got a checklist of 8 or so micro-atx amd motherboards and none of them allow overclocking, bar the foxconn nforce4 with its obnoxious chipset placement (and fan) and far fewer features than ati boards.
if gigabyte's upcoming k8a480m doesn't allow overclocking either, i guess i'll go with a full-atx via-chipset board. it still boggles my mind that the ati chipset performs so well in the reference board (reached 320+ htt speeds easily), is apparently cheaper than the nforce4, draws far less power, and yet manufacturers adamantly refuse to allow the htt bus to be changed. emails to the companies are replied with "we want the first-gen ati boards to be stable, not overclocked", but then why did
all the first-gen nforce3 and nforce4 boards allow overclocking out-of-the-box?
sapphire's upcoming high-performance ati-chipset board is being awaited by the overclocking community (see xtremesystems.org) as the new high-end high-overclock board of choice - many dfi nforce4 users are already putting their boards up for sale awaiting the sapphire ati board. hopefully the success of that will convince other companies to allow overclocking on their ati boards. unfortunately it seems most ati boards use clock generators so crippled that no bios update could allow htt speed changes anyway, a short-term planning decision that'll make me buy the first micro-atx ati board i can find that allows overclocking. that means the msi rs480m2, ecs rs 480-m, colorful ati xpress 200g, jetway a200gdms and eqs m56k9-mlf are all off my purchase list.
wow what a rant that was
