Which ATX 775 Mobo for q660 OCing?

[grechzoo]

Okay, I need a new motherboard, after my old mobo (abit p45 pro) died I stupidly got a cheap mATX gigabyte mobo. A board they admit is too cheap to properly overclock my q660. (can only get it to 3ghz and then they force a voltage increase of 1.321 which for me is just a bit stupid.) anything above and the computer crashes or just doesn't boot. manual changing any of the voltage setting or speed settings also results in no boot.

I know I was stupid (lesson learned anyway), but in looking to recover from this mistake (I'm noticing 2.4ghz is not good per core esp. after just upgrading to a GTX 460, which I will probably send back if I don't get the rest of my system up to order.) I'm having trouble finding the right ATX socket 775 motherboard for my rig. I want to make sure I don’t buy another mobo that limits my overlclocks or simply doesn’t allow a boot if I try to make changes in voltage.

my ram is 2 dimms DDR2 4gb @ 800mhz, don't know the timing but a good mobo should allow for me to achieve a similar 3.4 OC I did with my abit right? or as mentioned below I might consider buying new ram if it would help.

If I can get a motherboard, and a noctua d14, and maybe a new set of ram for cheap (around 250 for example), I can forgo the £800+ I would spend on a new computer for at least another year or so.

So which mobo should I get? What ram am I looking for to allow for easy overclocking?

Or should I just save up and save PC gaming till the end of the year when (maybe...shot in the dark) I might have proper money.

 

[bishoplord]

I'm sort of in the same boat as you, but I have to convince myself not to continue to beat a dead horse. I have the q9300 and can only OC it to 3.08. I also have a GTX460 x2 (Palit 1GB Sonic and Sonic Platinum). These overclock really good using MSI Afterburner, but without the proper board, I can't use them in SLI. I have a XFX 750i SLI board but it has issues (like I can only use 6GB of my 8GB total - it's billed as 1800mhz OC but never posts beyond 1333). Anyhow, I went back to using my Gigabyte ga-ep43-ud3l. This board is really nice and OC's very easy. I could probably go higher than 3.08 but I'm not confident about messing with the core voltage - however, I did get my old Pentium E6300 duo-core up to 4.20mhz on air with this board. If you want a good OC board, I would recommend this one - but it's still holding it's value. I got it for around $70 back in Aug 09 and it's still going for much higher now.

Anyhow, point I'm trying to get at. This rig is ok, but I need something faster and in SLI. Right now it does not make any sense to pay $200-$300 for an old Nvidia 790i SLI board and still be bottlenecked by the q9300. I can get a P67 board with x16/x16 SLI for around the same price and then get the Sandy Bridge CPU for about the same cost and be future proof for at least another few years (as my current setup lasted me two years and is still a good system).

I would advise you to save up and get a 2500k or 2600k CPU and either a x8/x8, x16/x8 or a x16/x16 SLI motherboard (and get another GTX 460). Two GTX 460's in SLI best the GTX 480 and GTX 570 cards that cost almost twice as much. IMO, I wouldn't worry about the 2011 board that is coming out by the end of the year. The P67 and Z68 boards with the 2600k or 2600k will be sufficient for your needs for quite some time. The reason why I know? Because these two can overclock very easy and are just as fast as the sub-$1000 Extreme CPU's - AND - you went this long with a Q6600 and you're still willing to work with it. The 2600k and 2600k would bury the 775 socket CPU's no matter how much money you try to spend on it. IMO, I need to accept the fact that I have to 'retire' my current rig and just move on to the newer i7 or i5. A new 775 MB, Ram, ETC. will just not be worth it in the long run. Instead of spending it on the old tech, put it towards a down payment on the new. (I'm also speaking for myself. I need to put that XFX 750i back on Ebay now and then the gigabyte ga-ep43-ud3l board once I upgrade to Sandy Bridge).

Good luck. Myself, I'm gonna try my best to hold out to mid-May and see what the Z68 boards can do. I really need a board that can take advantage of the the iGPU features for video encoding + using discrete video cards in SLI for gaming. The SSD caching sounds tempting as well.

 

[grechzoo]

thanks for your reply.

i understand what you are saying, but for me, i dont need max setting for gaming, just good settings, so one gtx 460 and 3.4-3.6 ghz on a quad would really do me fine for the next 18 months of gaming i think.

the thing i didn;t mention is i recently fell into a lot of bad luck last year and my money situatioon is at the point where im saving just to get out of debt, so technically i not only have no money, but i simply have a large negative balance, and no job.

if i was in a job, and in a better position, there is no doubt i would be taking your advice. but right now i need to delay the prospect of dropping almost 1k on a new pc until my bank account is feeling a lot happier.

plus in 18 months, SSDs, and GFX cards will be cheaper and further along. also i kind of need the CPU now because i am planning to animate a second demo reel with maya,

 

[jsc]

Okay, I need a new motherboard, after my old mobo (abit p45 pro) died I stupidly got a cheap mATX gigabyte mobo.

Let me guess - a G41 (either Combo or ES2L)?

It wasn't the CPU voltage increase that did you in. It was the fact that the G41 (all G41's) is an entry level economy board. One of the things that makes it an economy chipset is the relatively low FSB ceiling - about 350 MHz.

I have a couple of these. They are great boards as long as you do not try to make them do something they were not designed to.

I like the Gigabyte P45 boards for overclocking Core2 systems.

 

[bishoplord]

Oh I don't need max settings either just 1280 x 720 for my 3D projector. Last night I tried playing Fallout and it studdered so bad it wasn't worth playing. When I turned all the details down or off entirely, the game became unstable.

So I've been doing as much research as I can as I really don't want to spend another $1000 on a new system but it may not be the GTX's problem. Ive read that the lower the resolution for gaming the more CPU dependant the game is. Only at the higher resolutions would you be able to put the load back on the GPU. I guess that's why all those benchmarch comparisons are at high res. Unfortunately, 3D Vision won't work in those settings. I'll try Fallout 3 in a higher res (2D) and see how the rig handles it.

 

[grechzoo]

i ave decided against this upgrade,

mainly because the only p45 board out there are ddr3 and ddr3 means i can clock my fsb more than 350 anyway (because its only a 1066fsb CPU)

so look like i will be saving.