Best motherboards for Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz

[Tin]

Hi!!!

I'm looking forward to buy an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz.

I want to know what's the best motherboard for this processor, (motherboard budget US$200), also it would be good to know which RAM to use (RAM budget US$130).

Thanks.

 

[GhislainG]

You should define your requirements and then ask which motherboard would best meet them. Tell us if you need Crossfire or SLI, how much memory you need, what OS, etc.

 

[Tin]

For now I don't need SLI but it's good to leave the option open for the future (Graphics Card: EVGA 512-P3-N884-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ Superclocked Edition 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16) 2Gb of RAM, Windows XP Professional 32bit until Win7.

 

[caniba]

Then definitely go with the Gigabyte EP45-UD3R. Great value, great board, stable, super easy to OC.

 

[fullmetall]

Yea Gigabyte UD3R will do the job,
Ram, go with G.Skills top 2(2x2gb) ram, usually i would say OCZ Reapers but, G.Skills will be fine at DDR2 800 (PC2 6400).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231209
This one has tighter timings on the Clock.

Cheap, your pick.

 

[Tin]

Thank you very much

 

[natsibley]

This board doesn't leave the option open for SLI does it? It only has 1 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot.

 

[Tin]

Yes the Gigabyte UD3R it just have 1 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot.

Let me tell you that I tried the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz on two mobos: Gigabyte UD3R and MSI P6N SLI Platinum and the performance of the processor on the MSI is way better, u can notice the performance at once, you don't have to run a lot of tests to compare and see the difference, I did not like the Gigabyte UD3R, for now on I will stick to MSI or ASUS mobos.

 

[TomBrooklyn]

I tried the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz on two mobos: Gigabyte UD3R and MSI P6N SLI Platinum and the performance of the processor on the MSI is way better, u can notice the performance at once, you don't have to run a lot of tests to compare and see the difference,

That's interesting. I have read some recent reviews of motherboards for SandyBridge processors, and it seems the motherboards have a negligeble effect on CPU performance. Was it different for the P45 boards?