NF590 to ?

[ZK2007]

I'm quite the gamer loving to play all the latest graphics intensive games at 1920x1200 with max settings and I'm ready to leave behind my NF590 to something new.. futureproof, yet not insanely unnecessary. X38 is really catching my eye, but unsure about the DDR3 only situation with it being so new.. P35 is interesting with some of the boards accepting DDR2 as well, but doesn't have PCI-E v2 which may or may not be a bad thing. My ram died, so I'm limpin along with 512m of cheap kingston ram in Vista making sure it was the ram that went bad, not the mb. I have to buy ram now.. It appears the ram i had is the best kind.. the C4 Corsair 6400 v1.2 rev A Micron stuff. I also don't plan on going SLI ever, but am interested in getting a Penryn cpu.
Are the Dual16x lanes overkill with my situation or even with the one 8800GTX would the 2nd 16x be futureproofing something new that would utilize the full bandwidth? Am i ok sticking with my current ram selection on a P35 board that accepts DDR3 as well or should I go with DDR3 later on an X38 and just limp along with the cheap kingston stuff for now on my NF590? X38 better off waiting for, to get DDR3 more established? The more I read, the more questions I end up wanting to ask.
Any help would be appreciated!

-------------------------
E6700
Asus P5N32 SLI Platinum Wifi/AP Solo
evga 8800GTX
2x1Gb Corsair cm2x1024-6400C4v1.2
X-Fi Platinum
2x150g Raptors
1x500g WD Sata
1x250g WD Sata
Gateway FPD2485W

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Seeing as how you have loads of dispensable income, you can afford to buy whatever is most expensive, see that you made a mistake, and continue on knowing that you still have enough cash to make more mistakes.

Do you feel a need to upgrade? You have a C2D with an 8800GTX, the chipset will have literally no impact on your performance at this point. The rule is not to upgrade unless you feel like you're not getting the performance you need. Moving to a P35 chipset will only let you use CPUs that aren't out yet, and that will require you to move all your parts to a new motherboard and reinstall Windows.

Stick with what you have, and only upgrade to new stuff when new stuff comes out. You're very current.

EDIT: reread the part about your RAM dieing. Just replace your RAM with some decent DDR2. When you need to upgrade your PC, make a decision based on what's out, you may want to wait until benchmarks come out to see if there is a difference between P35, X28, and whatever is coming out from AMD/nVidia at that time.

 

[ZK2007]

I don't have dispensable income and no, I cannot afford to buy whatever is the most expensive. I upgraded from an MSI KT4 Ultra FISR to the latest, greatest.. or atleast that's what I thought. Come to findout the brand new P5N32SLI Premium used the C19 which was basically at the end of it's run and got outdone by the C55.. on top of the other advancements along with it. Yes, I'm a bit content.. blissfully ignorant of new technology advancements since I can't miss what I haven't experienced. All this alone wasn't necessarily the reason for the re-upgrading. I spent over $2000 on cpu/mb/ram/video card/psu and then several hundred more later when I decided 1 ide port wasn't going to cut it and upgraded to nice sata drives and sata dvd burner. It was THE biggest and only upgrading I'd done in several years, so it isn't like I just dump tons of cash at every new hardware advancement. I'm keeping the CPU for now, the $600+ video card, drives and such until they fail. The only upgrading at this time is Mb/ram, which is what I wanted opinions on so that I can not repeat my last mistake again.

YMAA, I do see your idea of just buying good ram for my current system and let the mb/ram get out and heavily benchmarked to see if I really need to upgrade them when, technically, the current system isn't exactly NOT doing what I want. On the other hand my idea is having something that's futureproof atleast for a few years so that I can atleast have more options. My current mb won't accept any higher than C2D. I can't do QuadCore nor could I do Penryn if I wanted. Atleast with the P35 or perhaps even X38, I can keep my C2D and still advance up to Quad or Penryn when I had the extra cash.

"Current" is only a few months worth in the hardware field and I've long since grown fond of the idea that one cannot wait for the next best thing, because there's going to be something better out before your "new" stuff even gets dust built up on it. Again.. I don't see Nf590 as exactly current anymore when most folks are hardcore in to 680i's and some are even now workin with P35's so perhaps a little catching up is in order, is all.

 

[ZK2007]

Since only 1 person has offered to post a response to my question.. i'll answer my own and see if someone would give an opinion on my choice, rather than having to help make one for me. The MSI X38 Diamond appears to be my best option for long-term use. I can keep my current hardware and use it on the new board and when I want, I can move up to DDR3 and Penryn without having to buy yet another mb. It will also not force an OS reformat for the hardware change to new ram/cpu.

In my initial post, I was more looking for advice as to what to go TO, not why to not upgrade at all. The choice to spend the money on a newer technology was mine, what I needed the advice on was what would be the best choice to get the most money out of the deal.

 

[o1die]

Msi isn't the most stable board, though I'll bet they've improved since I ran my old p4 on them. I would email tech support and see what memory they recommend for your board. Give them as much info as possible. If they don't respond, I would wait for a review before ordering memory.

 

[mfarlow]

I would look at the Gigabyte P35c board that is out now.

DDR3 doesn't seem like it will have a benefit for at least a year from now, and this board will allow you to make that upgrade down the road.

The x38 sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it's advantages will offer much in the near future.

Still, if I were you, I would just replace the RAM, and play the waiting game. You can get 2GB of good DDR2 ram for under $200 now, and it will most likely be usable with your next mobo.

 

[ZK2007]

I would look at the Gigabyte P35c board that is out now.

DDR3 doesn't seem like it will have a benefit for at least a year from now, and this board will allow you to make that upgrade down the road.

The x38 sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it's advantages will offer much in the near future.

Still, if I were you, I would just replace the RAM, and play the waiting game. You can get 2GB of good DDR2 ram for under $200 now, and it will most likely be usable with your next mobo.

Yes, I plan on getting good ddr2 ram regardless if i get a board that supports ddr3. As far as X38 is concerned, the pcie 2.0 sounds worthwhile for futureproofing as well. http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/base2/ should give a bit more insight on what's to come. P35 doesn't have that. Is 2.0 necessary? Maybe, maybe not.

"Lastly is MSI with the X38 Diamond. MSI manages to squeeze four physical PCIe 2.0 x16 slots into the X38 Diamond. Two of the PCIe 2.0 x16 slots are full-speed while the other two slots are half-speed. MSI also squeezes in support for DDR2-800 and DDR3-1333 memory on the same board." http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/4958_large_MSI.jpg

2 16x lanes would allow for a max bandwidth slot for a future card that would require such xfers, or SLI if the option ever came up. At the present time I don't plan on it and the benchmarks don't really give me a reason to spend another $600+ on a 2nd videocard.

Msi isn't the most stable board, though I'll bet they've improved since I ran my old p4 on them. I would email tech support and see what memory they recommend for your board. Give them as much info as possible. If they don't respond, I would wait for a review before ordering memory.

I've owned 2 MSI boards that never did me wrong. KT3 and KT4, both being their top of the line offers. I'm willing to give the brand another go around. 3rd time's a charm, eh?

 

[mfarlow]

^After reviewing the spec, Power limit redefinition seems like the only thing that would be beneficial at this point in time. I would expect it to be 6months to a year before we even start seeing cards supporting the new spec.

SLI is a marketing ploy in my opinion. SLI is never worth the cash when you consider the next generation GPUs will kick it's ass. I'd rather buy today's top of the line card, then ebay it when the next one comes out rather than go SLI, but that's just me. I guess if you absolutely need to be top dog, SLI makes sense.

 

[ZK2007]

^After reviewing the spec, Power limit redefinition seems like the only thing that would be beneficial at this point in time. I would expect it to be 6months to a year before we even start seeing cards supporting the new spec.

SLI is a marketing ploy in my opinion. SLI is never worth the cash when you consider the next generation GPUs will kick it's ass. I'd rather buy today's top of the line card, then ebay it when the next one comes out rather than go SLI, but that's just me. I guess if you absolutely need to be top dog, SLI makes sense.

Absolutely agree on the SLI. Too costly, for too little increase in performance. The extra 16x lane would just be nice just in case the technology came about in the fairly near future that would just blow away single card performance.

The 6 month to year wait on the new spec isn't so bad, as I've got a goal to have mainly the motherboard itself to last a few years rather than upgrade for every new video card or cpu that came out. As is.. I don't see what could change so drastically in video cards that would force a mb change to accept the new card unless pcie 3 does it, but doubtfully. I don't mind upgrading to a faster cpu/ram/video card as necessary and the MSI X38 Diamond accepts DDR2/3, pcie2, Core2s, Quads, and 45nm versions.. that, to me, seems like plenty of options open for speed increase without concern of having to upgrade mb to do it.