any recommendations for triple sli, ddr2, core2 mobo?

[funkjunky]

About 8 months ago I bought my new computer q6600, Patriot low latency memory, 8800gtx, in hope to have a near best system after overclocking. The problem was I bought a p5n32-e sli plus to bring it together. So my q6600 is stock at stock speed.


enough with the background. I want to be able to do triple sli in the future, probably for nvidia's next generation of graphics cards, while using my 4 1gb ddr2 dimm's of memory. I'd rather not spend too much, but I absolutely don't want to make the same mistake of cheaping out on the motherboard. I'm willing to spend over $100, but I'd rather not spend more than $200 if necessary. If this is impossible, I'd be willing to spend the extra money thou.

So what are some good quality motherboards with triple sli and ddr2?

(and I tried searching google and this forum for "triple sli", unfortunately with no luck =( )

 

[johhnyboy19]

tri-sli is avialable in the Nvidia 680i, 780i, and 790i serires of motherboards.
there are a bevy of motherboards using these chipsets(forgive me if I left out one)
but they ususaly exceed 200 dollars in price, and some of the 790i boards exceed 400 dollars.
If you are willing to spend the money on two more 8800GTX cards, you will need to be willing to throw down nearly 250$ for a 780I board

 

[Scotteq]

Agreed - If you want SLI with the goodies, then you basically need the 780i/790i chipset.

As far as which brand?? I don't recall the member who posted this, but I can't deny the wisdom: Buy a motherboard and video card set from the Same maker: For example: an EVGA board *and* EVGA video cards.

Why?? Because if there's an issue, and you call support, and they try to blame a (board) problem on the (cards) in order to get you off the phone, you can tell them "Great! I'm glad we narrowed the issue down to one of YOUR cards... Let's talk about that, shall we.."

 

[aevm]

Triple-SLI is not available in 680i AFAIK. I think it's been introduced in 780i.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3180

eVGA 780i is probably the best thing here, but it's $260.

 

[chookman]

Triple-SLI is not available in 680i AFAIK. I think it's been introduced in 780i.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3180

eVGA 780i is probably the best thing here, but it's $260.

Triple-SLI is supported on 680i is just wont do it at full 16x16x16 speeds, i think it goes back to 8x8x8 as there isnt enough PCI-e lanes on the 680i to support it. Thats why on the 780i that put the second PCI-e2.0 controller to gain more lanes and the 2.0 specification.

 

[aevm]

You're right, my bad. Apparently they added support for Triple-SLI to the 680i while adding support for Penryn too, a few months ago. Here's a quote from an article published in December.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3180&p=7

At any rate, somewhere along the way to the fix for Penryn, the new features of 780i became not so exclusive. First, NVIDIA now tells us that 680i can also support Penryn on a reworked motherboard if the manufacturer chooses to implement it. We also hear that most manufacturers are choosing to move to 780i for their Penryn support, although a few manufactures will release an updated 680i board that will fully support Penryn flavors. Last Thursday 3-way SLI launched (but not 780i), and we learned that 680i could also support 3-way SLI. This support is via two x16 slots and an x8 slot, and none of the slots are PCIe 2.0, but Triple SLI will still run on 680i. Strike down another feature we thought was exclusive to 780i. Finally, in the last few days we learned that ESA, NVIDIA's interesting new Enthusiast System Architecture control standard, would also work on the 680i chipset. At this point, we are left to ask what then is truly unique about 780i.

The answer appears to be three x16 PCIe slots instead of x16, x16, x8 with two of the slots (but not all three) being PCIe 2.0 compliant. This seems to be a tremendously small advantage, even for a chipset that is clearly more evolutionary than revolutionary. Our own tests confirm what NVIDIA has already told us, and that is that performance of the 780i under the same test conditions is the same as the 680i chipset. There is, however, one big advantage for 780i. You can be sure, with 780i, that your motherboard will support Penryn. While the 680i might support Wolfdale with a BIOS update, you will need a new board to run Yorkfield. If you are going to have to buy a new NVIDIA board, you might as well buy the 780i.