Best Motherboard for E8500

Hi. I am getting an E8500 and would like to know what the best motherboard would be for this CPU. I will be using 8gb (4x2gb) DDR 1066, and either a 4870 or a gtx 260 gpu, a sumbeam core contact freezer, and I will want to overclock the e8500 as much as possible (with it being stable). Please let me know which motherboards are best for each gpu. Thanks

what if I used the gtx 260, and eventually want SLI?

Have you used an nvidia 680i, 750, 780 or 790i chipset in the past? What Intel chipsets have you used?

The last motherboard I used to overclock my old Dual Core was the ABIT AL8. Thanks

The X48/P45 or even P35 will OC significantly better than and old AMD socket 939 NF4.

X48 can be DDR2 (the X48 board I posted is DDR2) or DDR3 is available also.

Well, X48's are still at a premium. X48 is the top of the line. The ASUS P45 you listed is fine. P45 has dropped to below the $100 price mark in some instances since last week.

With an X38 and a single Radeon 3870, my 3D Mark 06 was 10,700. I added a second 3870 in Crossfirex and my score went to 15,700. So, Crossfire will give a significant performance boost from a sngle card in the right situation. An e8500 OC'd to 3.5+ with Crossfired 4850's is really going to be a great system. The 4870 has DDR5 RAM and a 1GB model is available. This would work great for my 40" Samsung 1080i. If you choose a single card, the 4870x2 would also be a good canditate to be pushed right along with your OC'd e8500. Like I said An x48 or P45 with two 4850's in Crossfirex is an affordable solution to a high end system. OCing an e8500 in conjunction with that setup should provide a seriously fast, stable gaming system. Of course the e8600 at 4.5Ghz. on air would score higher 8).

THe P5E Deluxe X48 has only one ethernet connector, that's it. 8). I believe the Ramapge Formula uses the ROG (Republic of gamers) BIOS which has some very nice overclocking features. Not sure if the P5E Deluxe uses ROG BIOS, it probably does, but not sure about that. The P5E Deluxe should be great! Same board as the Rampage without...well the name!

Yeah, should be the same OCing with the ASUS X48. I have the ASUS Maximus Formula Special Edition X38. When I go to the ASUS product page, there is nothing listed there, no BIOS nothing! I have to go to a common ASUS X38 site, not the Special Edition site. So, the only difference between the two ASUS x48 boards are one ethernet port and the chipset heatsinks. The ethernet is on the southbridge, so that would not effect performance. The cheaper board is a great solution. Not much more than the P45. And you get the higher binned x48 chipset with PCIE 2.0 16 x 2. That's as good as it gets for the C2D/C2Q using DDR2.

ok perfect! do u know how high the e8500 should overclock with that setup (p5e deluxe)??

But I read in some forums people overclocking the e8500 to 4.2ghz on air... i will be using a sunbeam core contact freezer, 3 180mm fans and 1 120mm fan....

You would have to push a lot of volts at the e8500 and MB to get to 4.2GHz. Somehwre up there, you would need watercooling to be stable.

I don't have the e8600, but it is the king of dual core procesors to date. You would have to set the voltage at or near 1.5v and have an aftermarket HSF, but yeah it is going to sustain a 1000MHz. overclock or better on air. I can't post the lin where it's done...

e8600, 1.4v on air.

1.5v. On air.

Well, 1.5v if you listen to Intel. The e8600 is an exceptional Oc'er. This article takes it to 4.9GHz. You would have to take your chip up in small increments and run some benchmarks and monitor the heat, etc. Haha. If I had one and had it running stable at 4.5Ghz. and no worry about heat under 1.5v, I would be happy! Amazing this unit runs completely stable at 4.7Ghz. on air at 1.5v. That's a pretty neat deal.

The e8600 works pretty well in these tests with the X48. x6800 will not OC as well. The extreme units have an unlocked multiplier which can work out really well. The e8600 has the later 45nm arcitecture, which run cooler and achieve higher OC's. In the article I linked, the e8600 is 'benched' at 4 GHz. Haha.


http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2095.html

From Page 2 of that article. This is why I want to purchase the e8600. It's great to see Tom's use the e8600 instead of the e8500 for a test like this. Use the best out there and it gets attention.

While many of our test games show enormous performance gains from higher clock speed, none have shown significant improvements in the transition from two to four cores. Thus, we used a dual-core processor that usually overclocks beyond 4 GHz on air cooling. Intel’s Core 2 Duo E8600 is probably the best gaming processor owners of LGA775 motherboards can hope for their motherboards to support because it starts out as Intel’s highest-frequency model and is easily pushed beyond the speeds other processors can reliably run.

I sent you a private message last week related to the possibilities of the e8600. Check you PMs. 4.5Ghz. with a little time and patience should be doable with the x48 and some high grade RAM. And a little voltage.

So it will do 3.8 GHz on .85V.

The e8600 in the CPUZ links I posted was running stable at 4.9GHz., but not for an extended period I don't believe. It was for like 1/60th of a month. 8)

so would you say 4.5ghz would be a realistic overclock on air (stable)?

I think the 9550 is the best buy right now. The quad is great for multitasking. I prefer the quad, that's why I don't jump at the e8600. I have the e8400, my wife uses it. My son games and uses the Q6600 right now. I would like to build the e8600 and eventually give it to him. Like the article this morning said, the e8600 is as a good a processor as you can hope for for gaming. But, if you are like me, the quad fits perfectly. The quad hardly works up a sweat when ask to work as a multitask solution. The e8400 does well, but no like four cores will.

Have you used the CPU charts on Tom's home page to do some benchmark comparison? I am not a gamer. I do not play any games. My son plays games. My son Plays, Warcraft 3, WOW, Counterstrike, Battlefield 2, Final Fantasy, Day of Defeat, etc. So, he's pretty happy with the systems I build. A few years ago I built his friend a system. The guy is really good and scores high in tourmnaments. I've bulit a lot of other 'budget' gaming systems for his friends over the years. Usually with my old parts. I've also built the machines for our business, so anyway. I don't know your level at gaming. I have my Q9450 with a mild OC (2.8GHz), ASUS x38, crossfired 3870's, and 8 GBs of RAM (4 gigs would benchmark better) on Vista 64. Before I Xfired the 3870's I would get 10,700 on 3Dmark06. Synthetic benchmarks are what they are. With xfired 3870's I get 15,700 score. So if you bumped the 9450's data transfer rates to 3-3.2GHz on am X48 with xfired 4850's, I'm sure it would be a sweet deal. Is it fast enough to be a b*****n' gaming rig? Would a tweaked out Quad keep up with the 8600? Does a hobby horse have a wooden ****?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] 2183%5D=on

I can melt this bad azz game down with my rig. I'm in the top 2-3% scores all time. :

http://flightsimx.archive.amnesia.com.au/

You would want to OC the 9450 to somewhere around 3 GHz. and it would score high when it mattered. The video card solution you choose is more important. But of course, you need a CPU to provide as fast of a tranfer rate as possible to the high powered cards. How about the Q9770? The X48 is perfect for that little jewel. The price dropped $50 since September 9th. I have it on my 'watch' list.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] Tpk=QX9770