X38 or P35 someone choose for me :P

ddr2. For gods sake it wont work because marks and stupid spencers dont like me ordering from ocuk and they phoned up last time askign if i was a fraudster. Now that its 950quid at like 12 in the mornign i gues they stoping it again grrrrrr makes me angryyyyyyy. lol.

My mums at work tomorrow and i gota use a differnt card but i may not be able to get her to fish oe out in time for me and may not be able to order for saturdayso ill have to wait till thursday noooooooooooo,

Gona go sulk now lol.
 
8igdave said:
My mums at work tomorrow and i gota use a differnt card but i may not be able to get her to fish oe out in time for me and may not be able to order for saturdayso ill have to wait till thursday noooooooooooo,

Gona go sulk now lol.
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How about Littledave, L'i'ldave, Ickledave or 1ildave? ;)

I'm in a similar boat with regards to motherboard choice. I'm certainly no expert, build a new PC rather than upgrade and don't mind splashing out (within reason) every 2-3 years when its time to re-build.

Rationally I understand (from the little that I've read) that X38 has no significant performance advantages for the average single GPU user. Emotionally (and from the perspective of being stuck with what I buy now for the next 2-3 years) just does not compute somehow that the latest stuff is not an obviously better choice than preceding technology.
 
For what I can understand the P35 will have much more of a production life then the X38 Series due to X48 Series being released within early new year, If you can be patient, I would suggest wait until then & see what motherboard offerings are available. If you feel that the buy now urge is too strong :

I would suggest going for something like a DFI Lanparty P35 Board.

1 - So much settings to muck around with, you won't get bored (I've had 4 non dfi boards in the past 6 months)

2 - You can clock them like crazy

3 - While there is so much to learn on those boards, it will keep you going for a while

I remember the good old days of a DFI NF4 Ultra D, Once you have a DFI, nothing feels the same again :o I should have bought DFI instead of my Maximus - Which I think I will buy a P35 DFI when I get paid again. :p
 
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Big.Wayne said:
Anyone wanna discuss the merits of both the P35 and X38? :)
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they both have the same southbridge so no differences in connectivity or performance there.
So, differences in northbridge:
marginally improved memory controller (at least for DDR2, I believe that DDR3 got more attention)
2x x16 PCI-E rather than x16 +x4
& those 2 x16 PCI-E slots are PCI-E 2.0 (not that there is anything that needs that yet)

Basically it comes down to do you need the second physical x16 slot & if so does it need to actually run at x16.
If you don't intend doing Crossfire on fairly high end cards imo there is no reason to go for X38 when a P35 will do the same job, to the same level for less money.
 
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BUFF said:
If you don't intend doing Crossfire on fairly high end cards imo there is no reason to go for X38 when a P35 will do the same job, to the same level for less money.
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Thats what I am thinking?

So if someone isn't planning on running CROSSFIRE then what is the difference between P35 and X38?

X38 is more expensive (sometimes TWICE as expensive as P35)
X38 Northbridge produces TWICE as much waste heat as P35
X38 Northbridge uses TWICE as much power compared to the P35

I just don't get it, why would a non CROSSFIRE user even consider a X38?

I've not seen any performance advantages offered by the X38?

Is it likely that next year (2008) you will benefit from having a PCI-E 2.0 slot on your mobo for *Single* card use?

Can a single card use that much bandwidth?
 
Big.Wayne, I go through motherboards faster than hot dinners. . . but look at my spec! :eek: I'm still on P35 Chipset, that says something.

I fully agree with the comment you & Buff have made, especially if your using a Nvidia card or dont intend on Crossfire with ATI, it's just wasting more money than its worth.
 
I think perhaps the next gen graphics cards will mkae advantage of the extra bandwidth. Which is the only reason im getting x38 really as i dont awnt to keep upgrading my mobo.

:EDIT:

I ordered about 5min ago so anyone that says i made a mistake goes on ignore lol.
 
I expect the benefit of PCI-E 2.0 will come into play with the release of Nvidia 9 Series, hence why i am planning on getting X38.
 
Big.Wayne said:
Thats what I am thinking?

So if someone isn't planning on running CROSSFIRE then what is the difference between P35 and X38?

X38 is more expensive (sometimes TWICE as expensive as P35)
X38 Northbridge produces TWICE as much waste heat as P35
X38 Northbridge uses TWICE as much power compared to the P35

I just don't get it, why would a non CROSSFIRE user even consider a X38?

I've not seen any performance advantages offered by the X38?

Is it likely that next year (2008) you will benefit from having a PCI-E 2.0 slot on your mobo for *Single* card use?

Can a single card use that much bandwidth?
Click to expand...

You've just saved me £40 (no you can't have a cut of it)
A tip of the hat to you!
 
8igdave said:
I think perhaps the next gen graphics cards will mkae advantage of the extra bandwidth. Which is the only reason im getting x38 really as i dont awnt to keep upgrading my mobo
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XeNoN89 said:
I expect the benefit of PCI-E 2.0 will come into play with the release of Nvidia 9 Series, hence why i am planning on getting X38.
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Ok guys, time will tell. I don't believe a single PCI-e card will require a PCI-e 2.0 slot to run at its full potential in 2008.

If your prepared to shell out an extra £50 quid to cover yourselves thats your call, but my personal 'rule of thumb' is never pay for a feature that offers no benefit straight away :cool:

Good luck with your boards and be sure to post up some good user feedback! :)
 
Nelly said:
I go through motherboards faster than hot dinners. . . but look at my spec! :eek: I'm still on P35 Chipset, that says something
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I would like to test a lot more motherboards but I never seem to have the time, also i find it a bit too intensive swapping out boards whereas swapping out memory, CPU or graphics card is more my bag (quick and easy).

Out of all the components a mobo is the thing I swap out least often, 12 months is an average time I keep them.

The ABIT IP35 family looks nice, I had the IP35 and IP35-PRO on my list, seems the PRO is a more complex motherboard than the other two but the PRO is just a bit too expensive for me personally and I went with the ASUS P5K-E WIFI/AP for about £35 less.

Nice to see ABIT coming back again, I'm a big fan of their boards back in the 90's and uGuru is a fine piece of work.

SidewinderINC said:
You've just saved me £40 (no you can't have a cut of it)
A tip of the hat to you!
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No probs Sidewinder, I think as the facts present themselves you made a good choice. I did nearly buy an X38 board myself (ASUS P5E) but after I read several reviews it was clear there was no 'meaningful' advantage for taking the X38 over the P35.

Now how best to spend the money saved on improving my computer experience . . . hmmmm :cool:
 
Big.Wayne said:
Ok guys, time will tell. I don't believe a single PCI-e card will require a PCI-e 2.0 slot to run at its full potential in 2008.

If your prepared to shell out an extra £50 quid to cover yourselves thats your call, but my personal 'rule of thumb' is never pay for a feature that offers no benefit straight away :cool:

Good luck with your boards and be sure to post up some good user feedback! :)
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Thanks :) The money doesn't really bother me, rather just pay out for th3e x38 and forget bout it for the next few years because i know im covere4d if i do need anything like pcie2 or a new cpu needing the higher fbs to be overclocked to its potential

Well im currently having fun making a bios flash usb drive. I cocked it up because i was given a link to follow to a HP usb drive tool which infact was made to change it into a floppy drive intead. I used it not knowing and now my usb thinks its a sodding floppy drive and i cant turn it back it seems and therefore its now useless.

But i think i managed to put the biosflash onto the harddrive on my printer instead lol.
 
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Force Feedback cod-piece!

And yeah, when the facts are put out bluntly like that they really do outweigh the slight future-proofness of it.


I just sold the Asus P5K vanilla board on the MM for retail price (was brand new, a replacement from my old dead board) and am gonna get the IP35 Pro
 
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Big.Wayne said:
8igdave, you don't need to make a bios flash usb drive? You just copy the BIOS file onto it? :cool:
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eh?

I was given a link to a download for this HP thing to turn it into a bootable drive. But it turned out to be the wrong link and it did infact change the drive into a floppy disk drive some how so now i cant use that usb as its just screwed up.

Then i got the right link to this hp thing which does work and ive just put all the files i need on it for mouse support and all that onto it:

http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm


Only taken a good few hours of curseing :p Took ages to find out what dos files i needed as well. The guide i was using never told me what files or where to get them (this guide does but i only just got it lol).
 
musx64 said:
I remember the good old days of a DFI NF4 Ultra D, Once you have a DFI, nothing feels the same again :o I should have bought DFI instead of my Maximus - Which I think I will buy a P35 DFI when I get paid again. :p
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Ah... sweet DFI! My SLi-DR was the best motherboard i've ever had! :cool:

Next best is the P35 DS3P i have now so i'd recommend you go for the P35 if you're not gonna crossfire. ;)

gt
 
Big.Wayne said:
I would like to test a lot more motherboards but I never seem to have the time, also i find it a bit too intensive swapping out boards whereas swapping out memory, CPU or graphics card is more my bag (quick and easy).

Out of all the components a mobo is the thing I swap out least often, 12 months is an average time I keep them.
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Same here, normally I wait between 18 months to 2 years to upgrade my motherboard, cpu, ram but in the last 18 months I've had 5 motherboards, may not be a lot to some people but it is to me, I'm going back to upgrading my motherboard every 12 months again just for less hassle & less costs.

Big.Wayne said:
The ABIT IP35 family looks nice, I had the IP35 and IP35-PRO on my list, seems the PRO is a more complex motherboard than the other two but the PRO is just a bit too expensive for me personally and I went with the ASUS P5K-E WIFI/AP for about £35 less.

Nice to see ABIT coming back again, I'm a big fan of their boards back in the 90's and uGuru is a fine piece of work.
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I think I've said this before to you but anyway, I have only used 2 manufacturers over the last 10+ years which are Asus & Abit, I think both make great boards & yes Abit seem to be getting their act together again, I havent bought an Asus mobo recently due to having a bad RMA experiance with them & I don't like the idea of them using soldered on bios chips, I really do love the dampener feature on the Asus boards it would be cool if other manufactuer's followed suit.
 
I've used 3 manufacturers...

MSI - KT333 board, ended up that a ram slot that I wasn't even using shorted out and started a little fire

DFI - Lanparty NF2 board, Awesome Awesome piece of kit, never had any problems with it at all!

Gigabyte - P965 DS3, Piece of poo, replaced it twice and now why I'm never touching Gigabyte again.


It's just a shame the DFI Lanparty P35 T2R costs £165
 
Good replies all :)

Now before we digress into manufacturer talk is there anything else that hasn't been mentioned in the P35 vs X38 chatter?

I was interested to see that the X38 chip now has an IHS, can't remember the exact details but the NB is produced using quite a thick chip (120nm??) which seems strange as INTEL have the production process for thinner chips sorted now (65nm and 45nm) so why not fab the northbridges using this tech? they would then produce a lot less heat and use a lot less power?

The cooler needed for the X38 boards is so meaty! and thats just running it at stock? Look at the board below (which I neary bought!) thats a monster chipset heatsink!!!

ASUS P5E


I like new products but I'm just not feeling this new release from INTEL, I get the impression a lot of people are just buying it because its new and expensive! :D
 
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