Hi Everyone! I'm back again and this time I have 2 selections of Mid-range P45 motherboards. Sorry if it is too early to ask this question because it seemed to me that GA-EP45-DS4 have not yet arrive to North America but I am too excited to make this thread and I am really getting a headache with this ASUS VS GIGABYTE battle so I wanted to get answers and settle down with one of these motherboards. I am planning on building a gaming rig for Q9450 Processor with an HD 4870 X2 and a single PCIe 2.0 x16 and I am stuck with these 2 selections of Mid-range P45 motherboard:

ASUS P5Q Deluxe:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131297

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS4:
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] uctID=2840

I also would like to hear pros and cons from both sides.

The pro/advantage of GIGABYTE is definitely that they have better Energy Saving with DES than ASUS's EPU...

But what about the pro/advantage on ASUS's side??? Is it true that ASUS's motherboards tend to overclock better than GIGABYTE's motherboards?

What about the quality? Should I trust GIGABYTE's Quality more because of the article: "GIGABYTE: ASUS Lied and Fooled Customers"?

And, What about ASUS's True 16 Phase Power Design(more like 8 phase design though); Is it better than GIGABYTE's 6 Phase Design???

Why are more people buying ASUS motherboard than GIGABYTE???

Well, what do you think? Which one is better for overclocking? Which one would you choose???

ASUS OR GIGABYTE?????????

I'd just get a P5Q Pro for $70 less than the Deluxe. Or a GA-EP45-DS3R, if you prefer Gigabyte. Who cares if the Asus or Gigabyte consumes 10W less than the other, when you get a CPU and video card that consume 300W together at idle?

If you care about efficiency, your money is best spent on the most efficient PSU. I recommend PC Power & Cooling 750W for that build.

For DES vs EPU: EPU use software power regulation, and can destablize the system due to unstable power flow. Few people in this forum care for power savings though. There is no problem if you just turn EPU off.

For overclocking, both of them oc the same. If you want the highest ocing p45 motherboard, it's a model from Biostar (yeah, you heard right, Biostar, current oc record holder).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138118
Not that it makes much of a difference unless you're trying to break records though.

For quality, Asus use cheaper parts, including solid capacitors from Malaysia instead of Japan. It's still questionable if it actually makes a real difference to the end user though. Even the highest end rig last no more than 5 years, so it's likely the motherboard will become obsolete long before it breaks down.

The 16 phase power design makes absolute no difference under real conditions whatsoever. There comes a point where further finetuning becomes meaningless. This is way past that point.

Pick whatever you can get for cheaper.

Definetly get the Asus P5Q pro just put it in my first build today and it works like a charm.

Why not this for $10 more?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131317

That's a nice MB, with two full-speed x16 slots for Crossfire. But he's getting a HD 4870X2. I assume he's not planning to get two of those. It would mean a 1000W PSU and more than $1000 on video cards alone

Actually, I was thinking of getting that too but aren't some of the new features missing? like EPU 6 Engine, True 16 Phase Design, etc???
Are these new features on P45 really important for me???

$1000??!!

Do you mean that if I go with HD 4870 X2 then I would be spending more electricity and money than going with 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire????

I thought that HD 4870 X2 is a good option to avoid Crossfire.... Or Crossfire would be better???

Also, HD 4870 X2 does not cost $1000 but it cost only $499. Are you talking about the sum price of 1000W PSU and HD 4870 X2???

I'm really confuse now.....

HD 4870 X2 is already CrossfireX GPU. It's just in one PCI-e slot.
Two 4870X2 would be a $1000 Quad GPU CrossfireX option.

Yeah, thanks WR2.

TBH I don't think many people will go for that Quad GPU. But it doesn't hurt to check before recommending a motherboard, right?

As for the electricity thing: I suspect a HD 4870X2 will consume a couple of watts less than two HD 4870 together. I may be wrong, of course, just guessing.

Thanks WR2. OK, now I see what aevm meant and I'm not anymore confuse...

Lol, You just scared me aevm when you said $1000...

Anyway, why do most people wanted to buy ASUS motherboard than GIGABYTE?

Since GIGABYTE is normally cheaper than ASUS why doesn't people go with GIGABYTE instead??

Sorry

Why Asus... maybe because some Asus MBs have Wifi, and some people want that. Or just because they've used Asus in the past and it worked fine. Or maybe because Asus spends more on ads (I have no idea if this is true), or just has better ads (no idea about this either). It could even be something incredibly stupid like Asus starting with A and therefore showing up first in search results and lazy people buying the first thing that matches.

This is my opinion, and by no means are they facts - im a noob, get over it, these are simply my opinons and observations (here comes the war im about to spark...):

i get this aura that asus used to be the king of medium to high level users... back around 3 yrs ago, essentially being the most popular mobo company out there.....but slowly they got greedy, using low quality parts, disceptions and such (btw theres an article on these forums about how gigabyte accused asus of lieing but they themselves have used a false picture to accuse them) anyways.... at first asus replied by saying that their product was indeed what they said it was but in their retort, they used a different product (p5q) than what gigabyte originally accused them of.... another deception. ive been looking on the internet looking for similar types of mis-leadings by each companies... to sum it up, they both deceive.... but in my opinion, there were more deceptions made by asus...

so my advice is to go with gigabyte... simply since it seems like they are more honest

LOL, I don't think you'll spark a war, no worries. Yeah, Asus and Gigabyte are in court these days trying to decide which one lied. (Or should I say, which one lied most ) My feeling is that their engineers are competent but their marketing guys are just too desperate. I can understand that, with the crappy global market these days.

Asus and Gigabyte are in Taiwan, you know... I remember watching CNN several times in recent years and seeing members of the Taiwan Parliament getting into fist fights or throwing shoes at each other. In Canada and US they are boring, they just say nasty things to each other.

not to hijack this thread but out of the P5Q-E [$135], P5Q Pro [$150], and the P5Q deluxe [$210].

does the deluxe o/c better than the the other two, is there really a big difference between the P5Q-E and the P5Q pro, All i really saw was more copper on the P5Q-E than the P5Q pro and that the P5Q-E has another Gigabit lan but probably on the PCI bus instead of having both fo them on the PCI-e bus, what do you think aevm?

loffles....

it's almost always the marketers' faults.... theyre so money hungry.... reminds me of the challenger space shuttle travesty ... sad part is they blame the o ring failure on the engineers... when it was actually the marketers' (in this case the managers') faults... check this story out if you hadnt already heard.. if you care..
http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/shuttle/shuttle1.htm..