I need a motherboard recommendation

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voomin

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Jan 9, 2014
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CPU: intel core i5-4670
Motherboard: ?
Ram: 4G kit 1600 G.Skill Ripjaws-x
Storage: Seagate SATA3 1TB
PSU: SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt ATX12V/EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply SSR-550RM
GPU: 2G GTX 660 Gigabyte OC

I won't be overclocking

 
Solution
jb6684
Yes, glad you pointed out 2.5Gb VRAM.... Folks can use MSI Afterburner to monitor VRAM usage during gaming. It Immediately shows that:

At 1920 x 1080 :
- 1Gb : really takes a hit when AA is cranked up
- 2Gb : good for many games, BF4 does go over the this on higher settings
- 3Gb : ah, no issue here, ah, yet...

Cards with ONLY 1Gb VRAM, no matter how powerful, have to cut back on AA settings. If they don't they go over 1Gb VRAM usage and your FPS will FALL HARD.... (I've got some older 5870s w/1Gb VRAM higher AA settings KILL 'em on many newer games..)

Cards with 2Gb VRAM are pretty safe...
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ImPrettyIrish

ImPrettyIrish

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Oct 17, 2013
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Oh, yea woops sorry. I edited it. Thanks for the correction.
 
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lonewolf7

lonewolf7

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May 6, 2013
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Do you already own/bought the CPU ? If not, I would like to suggest you i5-4670K, for some few extra bucks.

And go with GTX 760 which is faster than GTX 660. And you need atleast 8GB of RAM to play modern day games.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($226.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-PRO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($172.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($239.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $639.97
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-10 11:11 EST-0500)

 
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jb6684

jb6684

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Feb 20, 2011
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You have to watch VERY carefully, many boards "claim" multi-GPU support but bottom line is, you need x8 / x8 PCI lane support or you'll not see much if any improvement in FPS from that second card.

So, in this example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128629

PCI Express 3.0 x16
1

PCI Express 2.0 x16
1(running at x4 )

That second PCI slot is running at "x4" so, this board does NOT properly support Dual GPU's...........

 
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ImPrettyIrish

ImPrettyIrish

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Most games that I play only use ~ 2.5 GB RAM (BF4)
 
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jb6684

jb6684

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Feb 20, 2011
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ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are good brands for motherboards. With all of these, stay away from their lowest end / entry level cards (I've had issue with them). Given that ASUS is my favorite brand.

The lowest cost ASUS with Proper dual GPU support is this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131981

On RAM I'd recommend 8Gb (and Window 7 / 8 64-bit to support all that RAM...)

NOTE: you can't play 64-bit version of BF4 without at least 8Gb of RAM...........
 
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voomin

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Jan 9, 2014
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Those picks were a bit out of my price range
They seemed a bit too high-end so i'm looking for mid-range performance/gaming
+ in my country the price ranges for gpu and cpus are pretty high atm e.g the CPU you recommended is base $274 in Australia and GPU is at $312 base
 
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V

voomin

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Jan 9, 2014
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Yeah, I'm cutting back on RAM for the moment n adding the rest later on
 
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lonewolf7

lonewolf7

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May 6, 2013
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Ok, stick to your chosen parts, and you could choose this MB :

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Motherboard: Asus H87-PLUS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($108.72 @ Newegg)
Total: $108.72
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-10 12:00 EST-0500)

 
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jb6684

jb6684

Distinguished
Feb 20, 2011
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20,460
Yes, glad you pointed out 2.5Gb VRAM.... Folks can use MSI Afterburner to monitor VRAM usage during gaming. It Immediately shows that:

At 1920 x 1080 :
- 1Gb : really takes a hit when AA is cranked up
- 2Gb : good for many games, BF4 does go over the this on higher settings
- 3Gb : ah, no issue here, ah, yet...

Cards with ONLY 1Gb VRAM, no matter how powerful, have to cut back on AA settings. If they don't they go over 1Gb VRAM usage and your FPS will FALL HARD.... (I've got some older 5870s w/1Gb VRAM higher AA settings KILL 'em on many newer games..)

Cards with 2Gb VRAM are pretty safe...
 
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