CPU for GTX 460 SLI

[beserkr]

I recently bought a second GTX 460 to give me what I thought would be a nice powerful GFX setup.
Unfortunately for me I didn't do enough research and now it's painfully obvious my C2Q6600 @ 2.8GHz just isn't up to the job - creating a horrible bottleneck.

So before I drop any more cash into a hole I'd just like some confirmation that an i5-2500K would allow me to get maximum frames from these two cards? (I'd overclock the i5 as far as possible).
Would an i7 be more suited to the job?

Answers on a postcard please

 

[stulid]

A i5 2500K will do the job easily.

A i7 2600K offers no real world benefit in gaming over a i5 2500K - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/287?vs=288

 

[beserkr]

Thank you sir.

Now the exhaustive quest to find a decent motherboard for the i5

 

[stulid]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=mb-170-ms&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906

next question.

it others all the features you could want - http://www.msi.com/product/mb/p67a-gd53.html - and does SLI/Crossfire at 8X/8X so both cards get equal bandwidth.

Avoid the ASUS P67 range - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18261244 - far to many owners moaning about them.

 

[Mario]

Thank you sir.

Now the exhaustive quest to find a decent motherboard for the i5

I would recomend to you:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-165-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906
or
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-443-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906
or if you can afford
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-457-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

 

[beserkr]

Thanks for the heads up stulid, I was actually considering an ASUS.
A colleague of mine has the MSI GD65 which I've been told is a decent board... have to see if I can glean some more info.

As for the Z68 chipset, don't think I'll use the extra features, though SSD caching does look interesting.

 

[Mario]

To be fair,i didnt have any problems with Asus P8P67 Pro,exept they customer service.
Its more to the percentage of mobos sold by Asus,GB,MSI and others,so Asus dont have more problems than others.The more you sold,the more problems you find,and Asus sold considerably more mobos as we know.
But my second mobo would be MSI - not because its better than Asus,but purely because of customer service.
Good luck with new build

 

[Sin_Chase]

Avoid the ASUS P67 range - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18261244 - far to many owners moaning about them.

I'm on an ASUS P8P67 (B3 REV3.0) and was expecting it to be a nightmare. I was going to back out at the last second and swap to something else but my order got shipped so I thought what the hell. It's been nothing but perfect thus far. Put it onto latest BIOS before doing ANYTHING, set it up, whacked the i7 in it to 4.3 and have slowly been ramping it up since.

Had to apply a fix to prevent my SSD freezing in Windows (Which is an Intel issue not an ASUS one) but other than that it's perfect. The software is nice, it's well laid out and the EFI BIOS is an absolute dream to work with.

For the price I got it on This Week Only I could not be happier with it. I am not saying anyone else with issues is talking crap, it's quite possible it's very picky about compatible hardware and the PSU running it.

For reference I put XMS3 1600MHz in it which is undervolted to 1.5V at specification 9-9-9-24 timings and I even have it at 1T without issue. An old Corsair HX520 is powering it and it's on an i7 2600K.