I'm building a new pc off the e8400, I'll be running a G92 8800 GTS, 2 250gb 7500rmp hd, and 1 150gb 10000rmp for the os, X-fi sound card, vista ultimate 64, and 4gb corsair xms2 ram (or best compatible with mb). I am just looking for the best board for this setup as I am mainly going for performance, sound and picture quality, but also gaming. So I was wondering from everyones experience here what board would be best suited for that setup and achieving some nice oc speeds and offers great performance and a lot of expansion ability.
Message edited by T_Iz_Me on 02-29-2008 at 05:25:41 AM
"Compatible right out of the box" as in "will boot". Flashing the BIOS may still be a good idea even if it works perfect - it might just fix bugs you haven't found yet, or make something go faster. Of course, it may mess up something that used to work, so read the notes carefully to decide whether to flash or not.
Are you planning to use a 24" monitor or bigger and play things like Crysis? If yes, I suggest an X38 or 780i motherboard and a large PSU, so you can do Crossfire or SLI.
Are you planning to use 3 or 4 monitors? If yes, the aBit IP35Pro is good because you can have two video cards in it, each with 2 monitors, but the GA-P35-DS3L and GA-P35-DS3R won't do. GA-P35-DS4 will do, if you like Gigabyte.
Are you going to have lots of hard disks, maybe a RAID array? GA-P35-DS3L is limited to 4 SATA and 2 IDE devices and doesn't support RAID.
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What would be my best mb option to couple with this cpu for extreme performance, some internet gaming, high quality sound and picture...i could probably use my pentium 4 to flash the bios to a compatible driver if it wasn't out of box compatible.
What would be my best mb option to couple with this cpu for extreme performance, some internet gaming, high quality sound and picture...i could probably use my pentium 4 to flash the bios to a compatible driver if it wasn't out of box compatible, just more work than i'd like to do
The EVGA 780i is a motherboard, so I just answered that one OK, if you really mean extreme performance, get the eVGA 780i mobo and three 8800GTX cards and an Enermax Galaxy 1000W. You can't combine three 8800GTS cards, it only works with GTX). But this will cost a fortune, and it only makes sense with a 24" monitor or larger, not a 22".
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Markets care about the opinions of analysts as much as birds care about the opinions of ornithologists.
Well the setup I'll be running is a G92 8800 GTS, 2 250gb 7500rmp hd, and 1 150gb 10000rmp for the os, X-fi sound card, vista ultimate 64, and 4gb corsair xms2 ram. I am just looking for the best board to support, price really isn't that much of an issue because I want it to be an upgradeable board so if I decide to swap out the cpu down the line for one of the quad 45nm the board still has all the expansion slots and compatibility I would want with the latest software. Thanks for all the help so far!
I bought the ASUS P5E to pair with my E8400 2 days ago and had no problem. It saw my cpu straight away. 1333 FSB. The only think i changed in BIOS was DRAM Frequency to 1200MHz for my new Transcend 2X1GB 1200MHz RAM kit (Windows XP FTW) and that worked with no hassle as well
Some 680i boards (maybe most) are compatible with 45nm dual-cores, but these still require a BIOS update first. He wants something that works "out of the box" and there's no gaurantee that a system that needs a BIOS update will even boot with a processor that it hasn't been updated to support.
are the 780i boards much better performance wise? like for OCing and stufff
Compared to 680i, they add PCI-E 2.0 (which may make a difference for 9800GTX and later, but it doesn't matter for current video cards) and Triple-SLI (currently supported by 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra, nothing else). Apart from that, not much has changed...
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Markets care about the opinions of analysts as much as birds care about the opinions of ornithologists.
Any other suggestions on this, finally managed to find my processor so I am anxious to start this build ASAP, just want to find the right mb as this is my first time building from the ground up and really want a nice board to work with.
Any other suggestions on this, finally managed to find my processor so I am anxious to start this build ASAP, just want to find the right mb as this is my first time building from the ground up and really want a nice board to work with.
OK, I'll list some of my favorite options and you check out the specs at newegg and Google for reviews.
If you only want one video card, and 3 hard disks (and I'm guessing also a DVD burner) and don't care about RAID or FireWire or eSATA, then you could get a GA-P35-DS3L for about $90.
Now, if you want RAID or the ability to add a 4th hard disk (and a 7th, in fact) you can get the GA-P35-DS3R for $130 or so. If all your disks and the burner are SATA and you don't already have the cables, this is a better deal IMO than the DS3L because it comes with 4 cables instead of 2.
If you need a second PCI-E x16 slot or FireWire or eSATA you can look at the aBit IP35 Pro or the GA-P35-DS4 (or GA-P35-DS3P) or the P5K Premium. These boards will not be great for Crossfire, and you're getting an nVidia card anyway, but they will let you add a cheap second card there and use it to power monitors #3 and #4 (while the GTS handles #1 and #2).
If you want Crossfire you need something like GA-X38-DS4 (or P5E) and replace the GTS card with an HD 3870 or HD 3870X2. If you want SLI look at eVGA 780i or XFX 780i. TBH I don't think you need to go this far for a 22" monitor.