Sandy motherboard in Microcenter; Gigabyte vs. Asus

[joonkimdmd]

http://www.microcenter.com/storefronts/powerspec/index.html

If you go to that link, Microcenter has amazing deal for sandy bridge and motherboard bundle that you can save about $140.

My question is, which of the following 3 on that website I should pick.

All 3 bundles come with 2500K which I am buying.

And these are the 3 options I have for motherboard.

Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H 1155 ATX
ASUS P8P67 1155 ATX
ASUS P8P67 Delux 1155 ATX

I don't know what their differences are.
And this is my 1st time building a computer on my own and also my 1st time that I want to overclock.
My goal is to OC 2500k into around maybe 4 Ghz, put about 4GB ram, put either 6870 or 560 graphic card (not interested in crossfire or SLI although having that option wouldn't be bad), put about 600W powersupply and mainly use it for gaming.

I would really appreciate it if you can pick the right motherboard for me from those.
If you think all 3 of those are bad, then could you recommend me something else?
And if you got extra time, would you recommend me the other parts that would be perfect for my purpose including ram, psu, HDD(or SSD), and especially the case?

Thank you so much.

 

[yakri]

Check out this link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001314%20600093976&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=280|13-131-681^13-131-681-TS,13-131-679^13-131-679-TS,13-128-461^13-128-461-TS

That should give you some idea of the differences.


If you can't make sense of that, as I understand it, there isn't a huge amount of difference if they all have the kinds of connectors/plugs/support you want.

Out of those only the ASUS P8P67 Delux supports SLI/crossfireX properly.

The ASUS regular P8P67 could be just fine for you, if you're not planning on SLI/Xfire, otherwise the Delux looks like a solid mobo as far as I can tell and it's my top choice at the moment.

If you can shell out the $$ easily the Delux might be worth it, but if you don't want an extra x16 PCIe at full speed for crossfire, or any of the other extra features that come with it, the price tag might not be worth it for you.

Which ever of these you choose isn't likely to effect your gaming experience too much, unless you go SLI/CrossfireX.


Oh and I'm biased towards ASUS, I've owned a fair few of their products so far, and they've all worked great for me.

 

[joonkimdmd]

Oh, I completely forgot that the 1st one was H67 meaning it can't overclock any CPU. I guess my only option was P8P67 and its deluxe version...

Hm... I see...

Thank you.
I think I will go with the standard since I am not interested in sli/crossfire

Any recommendation in terms of other parts that I should buy with 2500K+P8P67?

 

[silky salamandr]

I really envy everybody that has a microcenter near by. Seriously makes me shed a tear at all the epic deals they have.

 

[joonkimdmd]

Haha, I live like 50 feet away from Microcenter

 

[joonkimdmd]

Check out this link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001314%20600093976&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=280|13-131-681^13-131-681-TS,13-131-679^13-131-679-TS,13-128-461^13-128-461-TS

That should give you some idea of the differences.


If you can't make sense of that, as I understand it, there isn't a huge amount of difference if they all have the kinds of connectors/plugs/support you want.

Out of those only the ASUS P8P67 Delux supports SLI/crossfireX properly.

The ASUS regular P8P67 could be just fine for you, if you're not planning on SLI/Xfire, otherwise the Delux looks like a solid mobo as far as I can tell and it's my top choice at the moment.

If you can shell out the $$ easily the Delux might be worth it, but if you don't want an extra x16 PCIe at full speed for crossfire, or any of the other extra features that come with it, the price tag might not be worth it for you.

Which ever of these you choose isn't likely to effect your gaming experience too much, unless you go SLI/CrossfireX.


Oh and I'm biased towards ASUS, I've owned a fair few of their products so far, and they've all worked great for me.

It seems the regular P8P67 motherboard ALSO has 2 PCI-Ex16 for Crossfire/SLI so I am not sure why you said delux is the only one supporting it properly.

 

[yakri]

It seems the regular P8P67 motherboard ALSO has 2 PCI-Ex16 for Crossfire/SLI so I am not sure why you said delux is the only one supporting it properly.

I believe it's because the regular P8P67's second PCIe slot maxes out at x4 mode (4 data pipelines), which will cripple a SLI setup by a noticeable amount. Even with the Pro or Delux boards, you can only get x8 mode on each PCIe slot when running SLI, however with current generation graphics cards (even GTX 500 series and such) x8 mode is only a 2-4% performance hit, where as x4 would be much larger. The reason you're capped out at 8x8 is the design of intel's processors/chipsets, so it's impossible to get true 16x16 SLI with the LGA 1155 socket motherboards.


Additionally, unless I'm confusing my facts, if one card runs at x4 they both get limited to x4, which would really kill your SLI performance.

 

[Snipergod87]

I believe it's because the regular P8P67's second PCIe slot maxes out at x4 mode (4 data pipelines), which will cripple a SLI setup by a noticeable amount. Even with the Pro or Delux boards, you can only get x8 mode on each PCIe slot when running SLI, however with current generation graphics cards (even GTX 500 series and such) x8 mode is only a 2-4% performance hit, where as x4 would be much larger. The reason you're capped out at 8x8 is the design of intel's processors/chipsets, so it's impossible to get true 16x16 SLI with the LGA 1155 socket motherboards.


Additionally, unless I'm confusing my facts, if one card runs at x4 they both get limited to x4, which would really kill your SLI performance.

If you have a 16x and 4x card one will run at 16x while the other runs at 4x, they would not both operate at 4x.

 

[ko888]

The regular P8P67 does not support SLI. It only supports ATI Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology. The second PCIe x16 slot runs at x1 mode by default and x4 mode maximum.

The P8P67 DELUXE officially supports NVIDIA Quad-GPU SLI Technology and supports ATI Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology. When using graphics cards in both the first and second PCIe x16 slots it operates in dual x8/x8 mode.

So the P8P67 DELUXE should be your choice.

 

[joonkimdmd]

The regular P8P67 does not support SLI. It only supports ATI Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology. The second PCIe x16 slot runs at x1 mode by default and x4 mode maximum.

The P8P67 DELUXE officially supports NVIDIA Quad-GPU SLI Technology and supports ATI Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology. When using graphics cards in both the first and second PCIe x16 slots it operates in dual x8/x8 mode.

So the P8P67 DELUXE should be your choice.

well...I am not going to use 2 GPU so I think regular p8p67 should be good enough

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The Asus .....

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p67-motherboard-roundup-lga-1155-sandy-bridge,2837-4.html

The Deluxe is not the only version to support SLI, The Pro version does:

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=HMMvTCuBcZLfu2YL&templete=2

Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
Supports ATI® Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology

The EVO version does:

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=erWGi4vbeZa8oxg8&templete=2

Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
Supports ATI® Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology

The -M pro version does:

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=iT2FJPCMOGBHClu4&templete=2

Quad-GPU CrossFireX Support / SLI Support

The Sabertooth looks to be the best of the bunch but I'm kinda disappointed that there's no x 16 x 16 version

 

[yakri]

@JackNaylorPE There wouldn't be any point in 16x16 on a motherboard since the processor/chipset doesn't support it. I wish intel had given SB support for it though.

If you have a 16x and 4x card one will run at 16x while the other runs at 4x, they would not both operate at 4x.

Ok, that's good to know, although I'm not sure how that would work with the processors limitation of x16 total pipelines. Can a graphics card be limited to x12? Or would it just run in x16 despite not actually having x16 worth of space to run in?

well...I am not going to use 2 GPU so I think regular p8p67 should be good enough

That should work great for your purposes. ^_^