p35/p45 or x38/x48 or 780i chip in mobo for a E8500?? please help

[jonj320]

ok, i have no idea whats different between these chips. i need a mobo that will work with a E8500. I dont overclock and only need one pcie slot for my videocard. im not looking for fancy features, just reliability.

if you have anysugestions on which mobo or which chip i should get please post. thanks

 

[JDocs]

Then I'd get a P35 or P45 (essentially the same as the X?5 versions but with less bandwidth for dual graphics).

Oxymoron of the day: Stable NVidia motherboards

 

[chookman]

P35 or P45 would be great. If your on a budget you can go with P43 if needed.

P45 i would go with Asus P5Q or up in spec til you get what features you want

 

[jonj320]

ok, that helps. i just dont know much about motherboard chips. this is just a gaming pc, and all i am looking for in the mobo is reliability. i dont overclock at all, i just want a board that works with the parts that i put in it and dosnt give me any issues

 

[huron]

You'll be well served by a P45. If you need multiple GPUs, then look at the others, but the P45 is a good one to choose.

 

[aevm]

I'm a bit confused now, this is a gaming PC but you don't care about Crossfire? HD 4850 Crossfire is the best bang-for-the-buck gaming solution these days.

I'd suggest a P5Q Pro or GA-EP45-DS3R. They are only $20 or so more than similar motherboards with fewer features and with a single PCI-E x16 slot. They are not ideal for Crossfire, especially at higher resolutions, but they can do it.

Even if you're not interested in Crossfire, it's smart to pay the extra $20 and keep the option, It will increase the resale value of the PC, 2 or 3 years down the road when a HD 4850 is under $100. It also lets you add a $30 HD 3450 or something if you ever want to use 3 or 4 monitors. Maybe you don't care about that either now, but with LCD monitor prices plunging you may become interested later. I got burned that way last year - didn't expect I'd ever want 3 monitors, and now I want a third but can't hook it up.

 

[jonj320]

its not that i dont care about crossfire, its just that i was looking at getting a 4870 1GB. i play at 1680x1050 so i thought the extra video ram would help.

 

[aevm]

That's a good card. Right, you don't need Crossfire for 1680x1050 with that card.

Compared to the 512MB version, it will be better at your resolution, but don't expect wonders from the extra RAM. It will be like 40 fps instead of 36 fps in Crysis, for example. You can see some numbers in this review.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3415&p=4