Yep official internal diode support is one thing to look at. Hopefully latest Epox boards have it (if my memories are right..). BB2K the problems you pointed at are past, now they've reached a point where their design is quite flawless. You won't be disappointed.
Oh and i heard about Soyo boards ("Dragon" models), I don't know about their real quality but they're a dominant species in Asia. What's holding me back is they're choke full of integrated peripherals...

As far as I can tell, none of the KT400 boards REALLY support DDR400. There are alot of hardware sites out there that are reviewing these things and finding the results a bit ... lacking. As far as OC'ing the thing goes, the new MSI KT3 Ultra2 boards can be had for the super-cheap and have very decent OC options (if you don't mind doing VMods ... the voltage options are the one seriously lacking part). The MSI boards do not have a manually changable multiplier, though. Furthermore, I don't believe that any of the MSI boards have a 1/6 PCI divider. The new MSI KT4 is supposed to be an absolute wonderboard, from what I hear. There are some really good reviews of it in the MSI section of the WWW.AMDMB.COM forums. From what I have gathered, the Epox boards are the top runners right now, though .... For straight-up hardware reviews and experiences by the people in the trenches (without a lot of bull$hit), check out the amdmb forums, though. They have an amazing amount of technical design and support information.

Oh, and as far as 200FSB being a feat, there is no guarantee that any hardware combination out there will get it for you. What I'm finding in research (since I am shooting for a similar target here soon), is that five people can get the exact same uber-hardware, and only two or three of them can get to 200-215. One will be capped around 166, and the others float between 180-190. There is no such thing as guaranteed DDR400 out there, really (the XMS is the closest thing to it, granted), and no board can GUARANTEE 200FSB. That is the real b!tch of it. For instance, I just built a system for a coworker of mine. Mine is watercooled and completely VModded. Hers is identical, but aircooled. With identical parts installed, mine cannot reach the 1/5 divider at 153FSB (it caps at around 146: 1.95V/2.9V/44C). I've got hers running at 172 right now with no VMods (1.825V/2.6V/55C). There is no reason that hers should go higher, but it does. Go figure, eh? I'm dropping some XMS3200 in my machine later this month, and I'm only hoping to get near 200FSB, but from the less than stellar overclocking I've had so far, I don't know if it's going to happen (I may just have to do the second unlock on my XP and run the multi up to 17 or something instead and keep my FSB stock to get my virtual wang size/Mhz number up).

Thank you everyone.

I've got another question:
What's the deal with the Athlon memory bandwidth limitation? I keep reading that the Athlon's memory bandwith is lower than what even DDR333 can provide, yet DDR400 reviews show an improvement over DDR333, but a very small one.

I thought that the whole purpose of overclocking was to raise the CPUs bandwith, thereby taking advantage of the faster RAM. Did I miss something?

Hardcore
 

Well, I have learned that when it comes to hardcore overclocking there is only one company to use - MSI. They are easy to use and very stable. I have used both old MSI Bx Master & MSI K7T 266 PRO-R (MS-6380) and both have been great. Quite cheap to. //Plaws

PS
 

http://www.msi.com.tw
http://www.msicomputer.com

I have heard of more MSI motherboards catching fire than any other brand. Could be just my choice of friends? I generally choose not to use them for their incendiary tendencies, but the ones I have played with were acceptable boards without a lot of memory tweaks.

Beware MSI ultras. Ive read a review on the new MSI ULTRA boards though, and the reviewer had 2 boards in a row go bad during extreme overclocking when he pushed the memory. Ill try to dig up the review somewhere.

Re: Hardcore
 

This USED to be the case. MSI used to have some great BX boards and Apollo Pro 133A boards. However, their quality has dropped in recent times in favor of their expansion into the OEM market. In my experiences, the MSI boards are not only less stable than those from competitiors, they are also more expensive and overclock pooly. MSI definitely doesn't have my vote.
-kev

Aim lower and when you hit something high it will be mroe exciting. That's what I do in life at least :)

LOL.
:D

Funny, I took that computer I built for that gal at work yesterday and had a bit of fun with it. She had a keyboard issue (user error) and wanted me to look at it, so I took Fuzzy Logic 4 (MSI app) and started seeing how high I could push it. It was a MSI KT3Ultra2 with a Radeon 9000 64MB, Western Digital 40GB 7200RPM drive, Floppy, Samsung DVD Combo Drive, Ancient Generic Modem, 1700+XP, and Crucial DDR266 256MB. I had it running normally at 11X145 (I kept it at 1900+/1600Mhz for ensured stability), and decided to have fun. I cranked up FL4 and started bumping up the FSB 1Mhz at a time. I passed the 153 (1/5 divider) mark easily, got to 166, and ran a bunch of normal apps (nothing hard), and it ran fine. I had hit 9X172 (under 1600Mhz) fine previously, but I was still at 11 multi (currently 1826Mhz aircooled). At this point I had a co-worker over my shoulder screaming "HOLY SH!T!!!" so I kept going. 170 passed, 172 passed, and it finally went to BSOD at 11X176 (1936Mhz, or about 2400+, if my reckoning of their "old" system is right, and at 1.85V/2.6V/Auto AGP Voltage with CAS2 timings being cooled by a stock XP cooler at WAY over 50C ... I almost crapped myself ... though it only reached this point inside of an idling windows XP environment). That MSI board did pretty nice, if I do say so myself. That was with PC2100 DDR, too (granted it was Crucial). I only hope that the DDR400 I'm planning on dropping into my board allows the same thing.

Epilogue: I told her of my experiment and she went nuts. I guess people don't like it when crazy computer guys see how long it takes to plow their processor into a wall. Damn heathens.