Which mobos can utilise the 8800GTX and a Core 2 Duo?

whats your budget for the board and which parts are you going to reuse from your current system?

Hi APT

Well I'm a lucky little devil 'cos I have a Xmas bonus to spend at $2500. I currently have an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ system with an X800 agp card and want to upgrade to the new DX10 video card. As this will be a complete overhaul I thought I may as well go for Intel this time since they've knocked AMD in touch at the moment. I have value Ram so I'll probably upgrade that to some corsair ir similar...

whats your thoughts...

ok, this definitely isnt a budget build then. this evga board is great, 680i chipset, oc's fairly well, and has 3 pci x16 slots. if you've got some extra cash i would get the Asus Striker Extreme instead. I would use this super talent ram, low timings and it has the Micron D9 chips just like the highend corsair memory.

Cool

cheers apt

I usually go to Centrecom.com for my stuff. I hope they have the mobo's there. I dont want to blindly get the most expensive assuming its the best and so with that in mind, what processor would you opt for?

Intel or Nvidia based, by ASUS or Gigabyte - thats the way to go

I would agree, BUT, If I were you I would go to the evga website, go into their forums, and read up on all the major... MAJOR problems that 680i chipsets are producing. I cannot in fairness single out evga mobos as the striker, CES boards as well as some other makers are having these exact same issues... such as RAID errors/SATA errors, Boot problems etc etc...

It has caused me to hold off on getting the evga board at least until they and Nvidia respond with some hard answers about this.

As far as options go... right now... the evga has the win in my opinion... striker is essentially the same board with a $160 premium.

the E6600 is the best bang for the buck cpu for your budget, its around $300.

Almost any mobo bar some of the cross ones for backward compatibility, which are pretty useless if you have a core 2 duo and dont use it to its full potential (eg with older video card or ram etc).

My P5B Deluxe hasnt done me any wrong yet so id have to agree

cheers guys
Well, this is what I have ordered today.

Asus P5N32-SLI-PREMIUM motherboard
Intel CORE 2 DUO E6600/ 2.40GHz/ 4MB CACHE/ 1066FSB/ LGA775
Sonata II case (with 450watt PSU)
Palit 8800GTX
Corsair DDR2 2GB PC-6400 (2x XMS2 1GB) TWIN2X2048-6400C4 RAM
WD 320Gb 7200 16Mb Cache SATA 2 Hard Disk
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD Re-Writer (16x/8x Dual Layer Black)

I guess its not too late to cancel if you think I've made a dire mistake...

let me know your thoughts...

i would have gotten some different ram, but the main problem is the psu, it might support the 8800gtx, but just barely, you should really get a different psu, 600w at least.

True, I did think the PSU would probablt struggle but it comes 'free' with the Sonata. I think I might upgrade the PSU and I dunno, sell the 450 on ebay or something!

I dont really know much about the RAM think - just heard reasonable reviews about Corsair in general.

I couldnt find your mobo's where I usually shop but I think the one I have ordered is okay...

Thats good RAM... might not be enough, but good... it is the C4Ram which I beleive is Micron D9.

Need a new PSU if you plan to Overclock.

You really want a new PSU.
450W is barely the minimum, you should get something with alot of amperage on the 12v rails.

The Corsair XMS2 ram is good.
I have the same in my system running at 1101MHz 5-5-5-18 100% stable.

If you plan on overclocking, don't forget to get an upgraded heatsink.

I just put together an eVga 680i with the 8800GTX and have absolutely no problems with the board or the card. How many of those complaints about the 680i would you estimate have to do with bad power supply? I used the PC Power and Cooling 750 Silencer SLI certified. I run 3 SATA drives, 1 150GB Raptor and 2 500GB Seagates. No SATA problems.

yeah there saying that SOME boards are having issues not all of em