Need motherboard recommendation

[waster]

I recently bought a XFX 88000GT which is incompatible with my current mobo. I'm now looking for a cheap socket 775 mobo that supports PCIE 2.0 (and therefore the 8800GT) and quad core CPUs but also has 2 x IDE connectors as I don't want to have to buy any new drives. I'm not bothered about SLI. If it overclocks well that's a plus.

Can anyone suggest one? They all seem to have only 1 IDE these days.

My current setup:
XFX 88000GT 512MB
ASrock 4coredual VSTA (regretting buying this last year)
Pentium D something or other (but will upgrade to quad core in future)
2GB DDR2 RAM

 

[aevm]

Cheap and PCI-E 2.0 don't come together, sorry. The cheapest PCI-E 2.0 mobo I know of is GA-EX38-DS4 at around $200. Luckily, your 8800GT doesn't really need PCI-E 2.0. It will work fine in a $90 GA-P35-DS3L. You can use two IDE devices with the DS3L.

What kind of PSU do you have? JUst to make sure it can support the 8800GT. You need 22A on the 12V rail.

Edit: did you mean 2 IDE headers, as in, for 3 or 4 IDE devices? That beats me...

 

[daft]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130158
socket 775
2 pci 2.0 x16
2 IDE 100
6 sata2
nforce 780i
$260

 

[waster]

Ok, that makes sense about PCIE 2.0. I just want a mobo that supports the card. Pretty sure my PSU is fine, I bought it when I bought my old 6800GT, I think it is 450W and has the right connector for the 8800GT.

I have 2 IDE HDDS and 2 IDE DVD so would like 2 IDE connectors on the mobo. I guess the other option is to use a IDE to SATA converter although I know nothing about these. They seem very cheap on ebay, I wonder if they work? The main thing really is keeping the price down as I wasn't planning on replacing the mobo let alone any other components.

 

[waster]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130158
socket 775
2 pci 2.0 x16
2 IDE 100
6 sata2
nforce 780i
$260

Out of my price range - but as aevm pointed out I don't really need PCIE 2.0. I'm thinking around the $100 mark.

 

[aevm]

It's going to be very tough to find one with 2 IDE headers. How about this:

GA-P35-DS3L $97
WD6400AAKS $115 - 640GB SATA HDD, very fast

Then you can reuse the DVD drives on the one IDE header you get, and throw out the old hard drives. They would bottleneck your system anyway.
Or you can reuse one DVD drive and one older HDD. That probably makes more sense, as long as you use the old and slower HDD mostly for storing movies or music or other things you won't access a lot.

I'm sure there are older motherboards still available with better support for IDE, but they might not support quad CPUs.

 

[waster]

I've just been looking at the GA-P35-DS3L, seems to have good reviews so might be a good option. I'd rather get a half decent board than an older one for the sake of the IDE support so I think I'm giving up on having 2 IDE headers. I'm now thinking I'll buy a cheap SATA to IDE converter and hope for the best, if it doesn't work I'll get a SATA DVD drive as these are fairly cheap.

At some point though I'll get a new hard drive and install Vista on it (want DX10 for the new graphics card) but I wasn't planning on spending the time and money just yet. Although I'll probably have to reinstall XP for the new mobo anyway so maybe I should just do it all now. It's annoying cos I thought this upgrade was just going to be a case of drop in the new graphics card and go and now it's becoming a big job.

Other option is to flash the 8800GT with a bios that makes it work with my current board, but since I don't know anyone with a system that I can use to do that it would mean getting a shop to do it and for the amount they want to charge for it, well I might as well get a GA-P35-DS3L.

Anyway I'll make up my mind at some point, thanks for your help.

 

[theforgotten]

If u dont mind the mess check out one of these :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132005