Hi everyone,

I am making a new build and am struggling with the mobo choice. I am eyeing a GTS 8800 (G92) SLI setup and therefore am pigeon holed into the 680i.

Big debate is the 780i is about to be released, so what I would like to get some opinions on is:

Is it worth it to wait?
Will the obvious (pending) price differences be worth it?
Is it worth the risk to buy the first round of 780i's with the possibility of glitches? or pick up a reliable 680i with a Q6600 now... and if the benefits are huge in the future upgrade to a better rounded 780i with a new gen chipset?

I'm getting abit trigger happy on my build because i've been without a gaming comp for a year... tried out a laptop, didn't work out too well lol.

Thanks for any help.

Two major benefits of the upcoming 780i is support for next generation Penryn 45nm processors and support for PCIE 2.0. 680i offers neither. A 680i/Q6600/8800GTS (G92) build would be plenty powerful, but would offer absolutely no upside.

If you must build right now and can't wait for the 780i, should look like this.

Intel X38/6600 (waiting for penryn 45nm to drop in), 3870's Crossfired.

Hmm ya i've been considering that. I've got to admit i've gotten abit wrapped up in the 8800 craze that has been going on

How do the 3870's stack up versus the gts 8800 (G92)? If I was to only get one and crossfire it later... that a big issue?

I think the 780i will have the same Penryn limitations as the 680i.
Namely support for DualCore Penryn but not Quad-Core Penryn.

http://www.hardwarexl.com/reviews/ [...] d_preview/

sooooo your thinking not worth the wait...

Ok i do like the x38 boards obviously. But my problem is I'm abit nuts for the GTS 8800 (G92). Now I would like SLI capabilities so that leads me to the 680i.... but if i was to be seriously lazy and not buy another graphics card then it would have been stupid to do the 680i... should have done the x38. This is my dilemma.

I'm not familiar with the new G92 8800gts, but the 3870 512 mb. is as good or better than the Oc'd 8800GTS I'm currently using on my X38. I plan to go to the 3870's soon.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=317

@Zen...wow, that's news.

no kidding.... yet i'm even more confused hahaha

I dunno. I just feel like the 780i's may be buggy and their ddr3, pci-e 2.0, and cpu expansion possibilities of the model i get my hands on may be even more out-dated by the time I take the plung to upgrade in a year or two. So maybe the 680i now... and a mobo +cpu upgrade in the far future if I need it.

I dunno, do you guys think my logic is skewed and I should just suck it up and wait for the 780i?

Depending on your funds, it may not hurt to wait another week or two.

I suspect the 8800GTS 512mb is going to come down in price fairly soon. The 8800GT 512mb is already starting to settle down to even below $250 in sporadic places.

My guess is that the 8800GTS will be very low $300s within a week or so.

By that time we might have more reports on the 780i.
I'm really hoping that full support for all of the 45nm quads will come.

Honestly, I can't see what the problem is.
Most of them have a lower TDP than the older Q6600 B3, so it cant be all about power requirements.

hmmm ok ya I agree. I am probably going to hold tight. I def agree that the new GTS 8800's are going to have an initial price spike... hopefully supply problems won't cause an increased price like with the GT's... that was obviously abit different because they were such a radical performance increase for a price lower than the old GTS, causing very little in substitute products at it's price range. The new GTS's will have some demand lifted from the people still going after the GT's.... hopefully.

Originally the 680i was supposed to support all Penryn's with a BIOS update but I've read of a power struggle between Intel and Nvidia (Nvidia won't license Intel SLI) which has prevented, to this point, compatability. From what I've read 780i will be compatable with both dual and quad versions of Penryn but the 680i is only compatable with the dual core and may or may not eventually become compatable with the quad.

To answer the OP's question about 780i since it is the 680i chipset with a couple additions I would like to believe they learned from their previous mistakes and early adoptors shouldn't have the same issues 680i buyers had. As for Nvidia or AMD, in some benchmarks the 3870 is around the same performance as the 8800GTS and in other's it's close to the GTX and with a price of around $250 it's a better deal than the GT.

I would say that with all the uncertainty surrounding Nvidia's current and future chipsets that badge's suggestion of the X38 and 2x3870 in crossfire is the best way to go right now.

hmmm you make good points.
Any known issues with the Crossfire setup? Or is it a pretty lock an load proceedure?

What monitor do you have? Bear in mind that it will be pointless to go for all the gfx power of sli / xfire if you game at a resolution < 1920 x 1200!

I'm gettin a BenQ FP241W... native res 1920x1200 . This is what brought me down this road in the first place... once the new GTS came out and performed better at the higher res and was priced cheaper than the GTX I found my card. Problem is now I either grab a 680i and restrict my expansion possibilities, wait and see with the 780i (which may even be out of my price range once it is released), or do the x38 crossfire thing. choices choices

I recommend the X38, it's a fantastic board. Dual HD3870s is a great choice if you're gaming at 1920x1200, i can't really recommend anything less. Any single card would choke at that resolution in any mildly demanding modern games.

I totally agree with quantumsheep, the Asus P5E (X38) is proving to be a reliable, stable very overclockable mobo! It has two PCI-E 2.0 full 16x 16x mode for upto 16GB of link speed between the PCI-Express bus. Remember PCI-E 1.0 has 8GB of PCI-E bandwidth. Not that any graphics card will be using all that much bandwidth... yet.

Hmmm ok. I am under the impression though that two 8800's (new GTS, GT, or GTX) in sli outperform the dual HD3870s... is this a fair statement?

If that is true then wouldn't my performance dominate with an 8800 SLI setup on a 680i board? Any links would be helpful for performance stats, I have seen alot but may help if I haven't seen something.

p.s. thank you all for helping me work through this

The 8800GT or 8800GTS 512mb would easily beat the 3870CF.

However, the 680i will have some issues with some Penryns.

Now, the Dual Core Penryns which should easily hit 4.5Ghz might be the way to go on these boards. (The Quads have hit 4.5Ghz so the Duels should definitely not have a problem.)

ati does not hold a candle to nvidia peroid! there is no comparision! benchmarks speak for them selves.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/1 [...] page5.html

I would go with the x-38 build if it was me! and go with one nvidia 9800 gtx when they come out and wait until they do, it will be worth it! this is what I am doing. got everything but cpu and ram and some small stuff but am choosing to go one nvidia card instead of two ati in crossfire cards.

lol. Any idea on the pricing/release date for those 9800's? i dunno if I can stand waiting longer than a month

My personal opinion is that the 680i will be good for another 3 years if not 5.