q9450 questions?

The only word from Intel is Q1 08.

That's anytime before March 31st.

400x8 should be easy (3.2 GHz).

What do you want from a mobo? DDR3? SLI? Crossfire?

DDR2 and just one gpu. SLI or crossfire optional. Is the x38 only mobo that supports PCI-E 2.0?

Yea (from intel) but before you buy into thinking that you need PCIe2.0...

The Ultra and GTX run just fine on PCIe1.0.

An 8800 GTS or HD3870 run fine on PCIe1.0 (I have PCIe1 and it's fine).

I would suggest a P35 motherboard from Asus such as the P5K-E.

I would suggest against DDR2/DDR3 hybrid motherboards.

And I would suggest against SLI if you aren't a hardcore hardware enthusiast unlike someone I know... 

Where are you finding the Q9450 for the same price as the Q6600? The prices I've seen are $370+ for the Q9450 and $270 to $300 for the Q6600. It's not too far off, but still a step up.

Clint

 

I've seen it as low at $330 for pre-order, but that is still $60 more.

" I would suggest against DDR2/DDR3 hybrid motherboards.
"
whi would you say that?
i was hopping to get a foxcon x38a mobo for that verry reason.

Here in the UK it's 150 pounds for the Q6600 and 215 for a pre-order Q9450 which is pretty damn near a 50% mark-up.

Sometimes online-shops forget that the Xeon X3350 is the same as the q9450 and don't jack up the prices equally. Just last week i found a x3350 for about 30€ less than a q9450. Good luck hunting.

I'd go for the X38 if you want to Crossfire since P35's have one 16x electrical slot and one 4x electrical slot for two cards, and the PCI-E 16x slot that runs at 4x electrical will slow down even 3850's in Crossfire. For just one graphic's card, get a P35 for sure.

About DDR2/DDR3 boards, as far as I know the only con there is that it limits how many sticks of memory you can install. It looks like on that Foxconn you can have 4 sticks of DDR2 totalling 8GB or 2 sticks of DDR3 totally 4GB. That doesn't sound bad to me at all, unless there's some sort of performance hit taken when a board supports two typs of memory? (of course as long as you aren't using both types at the same time )

Most Hybrid motherboards are a waste of money, its basically a mix.
You dont get to fully utilize DDR3 with 2 slots.
Also they've been known to have problems (ex. P35C-DS3R)

Hell.. go all the way back to the VIA bridge chipsets with DDR and DDR2.. They were horrible.

And don't forget I own one.

It's coming from experience.

I know, it shows your intelligence that you bought it.

Hey, I was fooled by TGH.

I got this when it first came out, when there was no newegg reviews  

Well now I know what to do  

Haha, want my IM incase of a hardware emergency?  

Please.

So its worth waiting for the q9450?

bump