Confused! It seems when I think I have made up my mind I find another problem. I want to run DDR2 1150 or 1200, 1333 FSB, 4 gigs memory, only one 9600gt w/1 gig mem (not intrested in SLI or Crossfire), Q9450 processor. I would like a very expandable board. I am not on a restricted budget but I do not want to purchase something I will never use such as SLI or Crossfire! I prefer expandability. I will not be over clocking etc. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There is a few things wrong with this... First...

You dont need 1150 or 1200 DDR2 if your not overclocking... 800mhz will be fine, cheaper and more compatible.

9600GT with 1gb RAM? Why? it will never utilise the 1gb ram properly and will see little performance increase (sometime negative) over the original 512mb version. And its more expensive.

Depends what you are using this machine for, by the spec i assume its more of a number cruncher than a gaming rig.

What expandability are you refering too? Additional cards, or upgrade wise?

THANKS FOR THE REPLY. actually both, cards and upgrade wise. I want the most bang for my buck but not purchase anything I know I won't use. Such as sli etc. My use for this will be gaming but video editing for the most part. I thougt by eliminating the SLI slots I would not give up expansion slots.

SLI slots can also be used for expansion as most cards these days are comming out in PCI-e anywho...

Typically for expansion you might be best with a new P45 chipset as they seem to offer more PCI-e lanes than most other mainstream parts, havent seen many extensive reviews of them yet.

That seems to confuse a lot of people ever since the demise of the AGP slot. PCI-E slots can be used for any PCI-E device and also you can put a PCI-E 1x, 4x or 8x card in a 16x slot. As chookman said more and more devices are coming out as PCI-E so if future expandability is what your looking for I would look for a board with 2 or 3 PCI-E 16x slots and a couple PCI. Something like this would be good
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813136042

It has 3 16x PCI-E slots (1 of which is limited to 4x) 1 1x slot and 3 PCI slots which should be enough for anything you might want to put in there.

@daleevr
This sounds like a job for P45 (suposed to come out next week).
If you can't wait get a Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4($235) or GA-EX38-DS4 ($200).


I've read that some expansion cards have issues with the new NVIDIA 7x0i boards because of the PCIE v2.0 bridges used. Does anyone have any details on that?

So, my undrstanding is that though the Intel DX38BT board has no PCi-E x1 slot, you can still install a x1 card by using the other slots. I f this is the case then what is thought of this board Intel DX38BT ? And yes I agree maybe I should wait on the P45!

Thanks for the replies!

My main problem with the DX38BT is the fact that it is made by Intel. A review : (check page3 for the verdict) http://www.trustedreviews.com/moth [...] erboard/p1
Overclocking is a bit limited compared to other X38 boards.
The second problem I have with the DX38BT is DDR3.

So the GA-EX38-DS4 makes Intel's board "redundant" in just about every way and it's cheaper.