Motherboard suggestions

Jono8 · 21 Aug 2013 at 17:16

I have an aging p67a-GD53 motherboard in my system and i was thinking of an upgrade.

I am running an i5 2500k at 4.3ghz currently

Reasons for an upgrade are:

At some point i fancy upgrading to an i7 so maybe a 2700k OR 3770k
PCI Express 3.0 ( if i was to go for the ivybridge CPU)
I might go SLI and my current board i think will only do x16 in one and x8 in the other. I would prefer x16 for both cards if possible.
A better chipset.motherboard might let me get more out of my current i5

So are there decently priced motherboards that will run ivybridge and are backwards compatible with sandybridge?

I would prefer to keep the price under £100

Or should i just keep what i have got

stulid · 21 Aug 2013 at 17:19

Keep what your got, reasons why,

• It still works.
• PCI-E gen3.0 vs 2.0 is only worth a couple of % more.
• Your board does 8X/8X with two GFX cards, nearly all the Z68/Z77 do this still, its only the £250+ ones which have a PLX/NF200 chip to add PCI-E lanes that do 16X/16X

Jono8 · 21 Aug 2013 at 17:22

stulid said:
Keep what your got, reasons why,

• It still works.
• PCI-E gen3.0 vs 2.0 is only worth a couple of % more.
• Your board does 8X/8X with two GFX cards, nearly all the Z68/Z77 do this still, its only the £250+ ones which have a PLX/NF200 chip to add PCI-E lanes that do 16X/16X

Oh i see! I presume if i run 2x GtX 670's the x8 PCI 2.0 wont limit them much?

stulid · 21 Aug 2013 at 17:27

Jono8 said:
Oh i see! I presume if i run 2x GtX 670's the x8 PCI 2.0 wont limit them much?

Not enough to warrant spending £100+ on a new board for,

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

Jono8 · 21 Aug 2013 at 17:54

Hm, what about for the other reasons? Only reason is, is that i will be instaling a SSD and i need to re-tim my cpu anyway so i was looking to maximise new bits and bobs before reinstalling windows.

stulid · 21 Aug 2013 at 18:01

Jono8 said:
Hm, what about for the other reasons? Only reason is, is that i will be instaling a SSD and i need to re-tim my cpu anyway so i was looking to maximise new bits and bobs before reinstalling windows.

A newer chipset wont help you gain anymore, only a physically better board with stronger and higher quality VRM's maybe will.

Saying that you should have zero issues getting 4.5GHz+ from the 2500K you currently have as they all seem to do this with ease even on cheaper boards. 2600K/2700K are very similar in overclock ability too, so again 4.5Ghz should be a simple target to hit.