Need advice on board plz

[Khar00f]

Hi guys i need advice plz on board choice,

originally i bought this machine

Case: ThermalTake SopranosRS 101
PSU: OCZ Silencer 610W
Mobo: Asus P5N32E-SLI +
Cpu: Intel Q6600
Cooler: Zalman CNPS9700LED
RAM: 4GB OCZ Reaper (OCZ2RPR8002GK X2)
Video: Some Crappy 40$ card (waiting for 2x 8800GT's)
HDD: 500GB Seagate (RAID5) X4 and 1X36GB 10000 RPM WD
Burner: LG Burner (sata)

i'm having a really hard to time to get my quad stable at 2900 and it never posts for anything at 3000 and above.
I was told it's the board with quad not good for overclocking.

so now i decided to go with Crossfire instead of SLI and so i need to chose a board,
so far i'm leaning towards the Abit IP35 PRO, i was told it's a really good board for overclocking and it supports crossfire.

I would like to know what you guys think about it, something to keep in mind, I need Raid5, Crossfire support and Quad Overclocking and of course 45nm support (a lil futureproof).

if you have any other suggestions don't hesitate to let me know.

and one more question plz, when i read the specs for the baord on the abit site it states " - 1 x PCI-E X16
- 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)" is that ok for crossfire support? it's the (x4 bandwith) that's got me a lil confused.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums mate

i wouldnt recommend to change your motherboard, also who has said it has problems with OC'ng Quad cores ? i have seen alot of users with Q6600 @ 3.0+ with that board.
ABIT IP35 PRO is a solid board but no one can guarantee that it will OC better than that
also its CrossFire config(16x4x) wont perform very well compared to dual 16x or dual 8x:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/245454-15-crossfire-faqs

A note about Motherboards:
Some Motherboards support Multi-GPU Technology at Dual 16x mode, some support it at Dual 8x mode and some support it at 16x 4x mode, what are the differences?
Well for gettig the best performance out of Multi-GPU,you need a Motherboard that supports Multi-GPU at
dual 16x mode like Nvidia 780i SLI, NVIDIA 680i( As i said, NVIDIA 780I and 680i support 3-Way SLI too),Nvidia 590i SLI, Nvidia nForce4 SLI 16x, ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 or Intel X38 chipsets.

Dual 8x is a very good configuration too,it doesnt have alot of difference with Dual 16x and its cheaper too.
Chipests like Nvidia 750i SLI, Nvidia 650i SLI,NVIDIA 570i SLI, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI, ATI Radeon Xpress 200, Intel 975x and ONLY 2 Intel P35 boards(ASUS BLITZ FORMULA and ASUS BLITZ EXTREME) support Multi-GPU at dual 8x mode.


The last one is 16x 4x, this one is the weakest and doesn't perform very good compared to dual 8x or dual 16x,so i won't recommend it for Multi-GPU configuration. Intel P35 and P965 chipsets support Multi-GPU at
16x 4x mode.


SO AGAIN KEEP YOUR BOARD, ITS A SOLID BOARD, DONT CHANGE IT BECAUSE YOUR CANT OC IT HIGHER THAN THAT

 

[Khar00f]

HI Maziar, thx for the heads up, after i posted this, i went back to TH's website and started doing some more reading, and i realized it`s better to get a X38 than a P35 for that reason and then some. So i was thinking instead of getting that board, i could get the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6, which is very solid for overclocking.

The thing is i originally bought that Asus board mainly for overclocking, that was the #1 concern, I would've prefered SLI over Crossfire (simply because the 8800GT in SLI performs a lil better in SLI than the 3870 in CrossFire.

But i`m willing to give it up and go for the 3870 for a board that will allow me to OC more.
i spent over 2 weeks trying to get this board to do more than 2900 and no can do, i hope you understand my frustration and disapointment with that board.

This is the link to the overclocking thread i started (just in case you wanted to have a look, or any1 else reading this thread for that matter).

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245531-29-having-issues-q6600

anyways let me know what you / guys think?