Board and ram recomendation

[pdc76]

hi all, this is my first post here. thanks in advance for any and all your help.

well, somehow i burnt out the pci-e slot in my board. no video with any card. so i decided to bite the bullet and upgrade from my old 939 to a 775. i just ordered a qx9650 cpu, but still up in the air as to what board and ram to use. i do have 2 8800gtx's, so sli is a must.

i was thinking 780i for ddr2 or 790i for ddr3. i've been reading here and there about problems people are having with them. maybe i'll just go with a 680i. i'd like to hear your guy's opinions about this. money is not an issue.

 

[Andrius]

780i (I'm not so sure the 680i is a good idea on a 45nm chip)
My pick would be ASUS Striker II Formula. It's not based on the reference design and a fix for the "video corruption issue" should be released on Monday.

On a side note. You wouldn't happen to have an Athlon X2 socket 939 chip would you? I've been trying to get one here(Europe, Slovenia) but they are unavailable. I'd be willing to buy one but I need a friendly soul to ship it to me as online shops don't really think of us as an EU state.

 

[pdc76]

that board looks nice. i was unaware of the video corruption issue. what is going on there? i was looking at the 780i board from evga too, as well as the 790i. i'm considering ddr3, but unless there's a big difference, i'm not going to bother. anyone else have any opinions?

as far as the 939 goes, i just got rid of my fx-60 the other day, as well as my old ddr ram. the proc is actually on ebay right now. my user name is the same as here if you wanna look it up. shipping would be my actual cost.

 

[Andrius]

In some configurations on 7x0i boards when playing a video through DirectDraw/Direct3D drivers it develops corruption followed by the system crashing/hanging. I'm not sure if this applies to the Striker board but most other 7x0i boards are affected. The EVGA 780i is affected as well.
There's two links by me in this thread (from yesterday):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=13&post=251552&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0#t1812105
A video of what happens and a link to a NVIDIA tech support item on this subject (if you are interested).

There is very little difference performance wise between DDR2 and DDR3.
Tom's had an article about a month ago here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/toms-ultimate-ram-speed-tests,review-30648.html It's around 1-5%. Maybe a frame or 2 in games IIRC.

I checked the FX-60 on ebay. It's a bit outside my league (I was hoping for an 3800+ or 4200+). No point getting a $260 CPU for a 3.5 year old rig. Thanks anyway.