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Just my 2 cents, but before shelling out, think about what you really want from overclocking.
The extreme overclockers you meet in places like www.ABXZone.com don't run their machines at extreme speeds all day. It's just a game, like drag racing, and a very expensive one too.
If you are planning to overclock to gain extra speed with 24/7 stability, then you'll need to rein it in and seach for the sweet spot regarding bang for buck.
FWIW, I run an older P4 2.4b on an e7205 chipset at fsb 162 (2.9 near as dammit) day in day day out. Why? Because that's the highest I can go without having to increase voltages all round, suffer cooling hassles and lower memory timings significantly.
In my case, I'm overclocking largely as a money saver. I get nearly 90 per cent of the top end on the "b" series for +/- 33 per cent of the price.
Try to decide whether you fall into this bracket or are an out-and-out drag-racer, because each road will lead to different purcashing decisions.
Especially for memory. The extravagant claims and high prices around some brands are reminiscent of the hifi cables racket in the sense that you would be very hard put to notice the slightest difference in day to day operations, though of course you'd see a difference on benchmarks.
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Very good points Fish.
Regarding the choice between the 2 mobos you mention, it's give and take. Both are top notch mobo manus, but that in itself isn't always guaranteeing the best choice. You certainly don't want to be stuck with 1:1 ratio as it will almost certainly cause you some pain in holding back max perf or o/c. This should be fixable via BIOS but then so is the other mobo's lack of tweakability (tweakability is more easily fixed though). The fact that the Asus has achieved what you want is a good sign but firstly note the diff in mobo editions (the E-D may mean something) and secondly rem that what other people achieve has very little bearing on how you will fare. As for the NB I'd always suggest going with the passive HS option BUT bearing the o/c'ing and QDR FSB in mind it could prove limiting even if upgraded to a Zalman type solution. The little fans they stick on there are always low quality noisy things so either way you'll be doing some modding. I'd still choose the passive HS as since it relies on passive only for 800FSB the HS will be of better quality, with a fan it should be far better AND you get to choose the fan.
Sorry to make your life harder, but I'd keep looking to see if there are other mobos based on the chipset you want which may help you to compromise / gamble with BIOS updates less. Best of luck!
It's okay to have a diff of opinion, can often be beneficial. Anyway I'd have to say the TbredB and Barton based AthlonXP easily offer better price-perf but the 800FSB P4's really do give you top perf and smoothness thanks to HT. Still it will cost you between £100 and £200 more to go the P4 route for negligible gains. As it also seems Prescott won't work in many current mobos (power and heat problems) you kind of lose much of the future-proofing too. I'd expect Intel to iron out the wrinkles in Prescott much the same way AMD did with the orig Tbreds (TbredA).
Thanks for all your input folks
