I'm having a helluva time narrowing this down. I wish Tom's hardware did a MoBo comparison based on price the way they do with graphics cards. Anyway, what mobo in your opinion is the best under $280 with these requirements:

- Socket 775 (X48)
- FSB 1333
- DDR3 Ram support (1600 or better)
- Crossfire support
- PCI Express 2.0 x16: 2

The only 2 I've found with reasonable reviews are

1)ASRock X48 TurboTwin Wifi
2)MSI X48 Platinum

But neither board has much in the way of testimonials & reviews. So can you help a guy out? Are either boards I listed any good, and do you know of another board that's better and still under $280? Thanks a bunch.

Shant D.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131284

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] E%2bDeluxe

Thanks for the quick reply mate. Unfortunately those 2 motherboards suffer from the same defficiency in that neither supports DDR3. Otherwise that Rampage board sounds ideal for what I need. Maybe there's a version with DDR3 support that doesn't cost an additional $100. I'll check into it. Thanks again, and keep the suggestions coming!

Shant

There is a lot of DDR2 that will clock close to DDR3 speeds (if needed) for little money. DDR3 is expensive right now and the specs are bad. CAS7 if you pay a premium? Not worth the higher data transfer speeds with that high CAS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130140

If i was you and had not already bought my ram i would get the rampage formula.. I have this board and look at my signature and see what it can do. I have got 14000 on 3dmark with this board and ddr2. G-skill 2X4gb 1066...

Sorry forgot to add that my FSB is 1500 and i am using a 3870. I have ran this board at 1600 fsb but my cpu then was only 3.2 because i lower multiplier.

do you have your ram already??

indeed , why do you want ddr3? no real advantage tbh , save the money if you havent already got your ddr3 and spend more on a higher spec mobo as others have said. i had a choice between the DFI Lanparty UT x48 T2R and T3R board which are similar prices but just couldnt see any gain in having the ddr3 ram apart from a lot less cash

I haven't got my ram yet. It sounds like you guys are saying not to go for a DDR3 Capable Mobo simply because the DDR3 ram isn't yet cost effective, and you can nearly match its performance with some of the ddr2 ram that's available. Sounds reasonable. But what happens 6 months from now when the DDR3 is cheaper, or you've maxed out your ddr2 memory and the only place to go is up to ddr3 and your mobo isn't capable of using it?

Thanks a ton for the info, this was precisely why I sought your input.

ok if you've maxed out your DDR2 then you'll have an incredibly fast machine , u can get ddr2 @1150mhz which isnt far off the ddr3 speeds tbh with better latency at half the cost. so if you have 8gig of ddr2 i dont see an upgrade being needed for some time. top notch motherboards can balance the memory agianst overclock too (strap) mines currently at 1066mhz with fsb @ 400mhz for a 3.6ghz overclock of my E8400 and its plenty fast enough.
its gonna take well over a year before DDR3 becomes mainstream tbh imo.

p.s i personally reckon by the time ddr3 is mainstream the x58 and new intel pin config will be out for there proccesors making our boards old hat anyway.

Alright then it looks like I'm gonna have to defer to you guys and go with that Rampage Formula. Between you and some people at another forum I've had this board reccomended no less than half a dozen times. So what kind of DDR2 ram have you guys had luck with on this board? Will it take DDR2 1200? The specs say

"Memory Standard DDR2 1200(OC)/1066/800"

So what does 1200(OC) mean? That you can overclock the 1066 to 1200, or that it will take the 1200 which you can then overclock? Lastly, what timing on the ram do you reccomend? I've read about people having problems when they tried to use ram with certain timings. Thanks again