Advice on Mobo's for new build Q6600/4GB Ram

ironfistx

ironfistx

ironfistx

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31 Jul 2003
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Hi All
Finally back in the market for an upgrade, its been years and im sort of out of the loop.

Looking to get a Q6600 and at least 4GB of RAM (are these any good? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-087-OC).
Will be getting an 8800GT as im a fan of nvidia, also not going to bother with SLI.

What kind of motherboard would you recommend? Im confused by all the mobo's they have now :(

P35 or X38? Whats the difference? Also I currently have an Asus board so im familiar with that brand, but can switch if its worth doing?

Additionally i'd like to get a board with a bit of future proofing so if it can use the new 45nm cpu's coming out and supports DDR3 as well so i can upgrade the cpu/memory in the future that would be good as well :)

thanks for any help given, much appreciated!
 
Any P35 MB will do, stick with an Asus board if your happy with them. Wouldn't bother with DDR3 till the next round of processors after Penryn, which would require a new MB anyway.
 
P35 is generally considered to be the best chipset for overclocking C2Qs. There ARE DDR2/3 combo boards but since DDR3 is neither worth the price nor the performance gain (or lack of) just get a standard DDR2 variant. Most popular boards are the abit IP35 (and -E, Pro), ASUS P5K-E, Gigabyte DS3R.

That RAM would be fine, even when 'clocking it.
 
Skyboat said:
P35 is generally considered to be the best chipset for overclocking C2Qs. There ARE DDR2/3 combo boards but since DDR3 is neither worth the price nor the performance gain (or lack of) just get a standard DDR2 variant. Most popular boards are the abit IP35 (and -E, Pro), ASUS P5K-E, Gigabyte DS3R.

That RAM would be fine, even when 'clocking it.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
wombraider said:
I would NOT recommend a gigabyte P35C_DS3R
I have had 2 and cant get them to work with 4Gig of ram
Click to expand...

I have built 3 PC's in the last 10 days, all P35C-DS3R's, all have used 4X1GB ram sticks, not had one problem with any off them (Ballistix 5300 mem).

+ Q6600 in all, and they have all clocked to 3400, 8 X 400 on 1.3000v all prime stable.

Don't know what your doing wrong on yours ? might be worth trying different memory.


Edit,

Doh!!!!!!! 8 X 425 @3400
 
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Hello ironfistx, the P35 Chipset Motherboards are well known for their overclocking potential and great reliability and they are very well priced too. Now as for the X38 Chipset Motherboards, these are the newest boards out. They feature the new PCI Express 2.0 lanes dedicated to graphics and both PCI-Express lanes run at the full bandwidth when running in a Crossfire mode. PCI Express 2.0 is backwards compatible with current PCI Express 1.1 / 1.0 graphics cards, but when the next-generation GPUs arrive that natively support PCI Express 2.0 arrive, PCI-Express 2.0 slots will offer twice the bandwidth of current solution. Their overclocking capability’s are very similar to that of the P35 Chipsets.
If you are looking at getting a motherboard that supports both DDR2 and DDR3, then take a look at the Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 or the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R, both great boards for the price. Both the P35 and X38 chipset based boards support Intels 45nm processors.

As regards to the memory, if you are looking to overclock, the OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 kit will hold your overclock back a bit and even if you are able to get 700MHZ out of them, you will only be able to overclock your Q6600 to the 3.150GHz mark until the memory becomes the limiting factor.

The memory I would recommend would be the OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2, these are probably more than capable of hitting the 900-950MHZ mark. Even if you keep these at the stated stock speed of 800MHZ, you will be able to overclock the Q6600 all the way to 3.6GHz before you even have to touch the memory. At the moment, these are selling at a fantastic price and are well worth buying.

If you are looking at buying 4GB of memory and you are wanting to have 2X 2GB instead of 4x 1GB then take a look at the OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2, they come in the form of 2X 2GB which will allow for upgrading to 8GB in the future if need be. However that's not really the main reason for suggesting these, the main reason is the price, £82.24 inc VAT for this sort of memory is phenomenal in my opinion. Though please take into account that if you are looking to run your Q6600 above the 3.6GHz mark then do not get the above since these, very much like most of the other 2X 2GB memory kits out their, they are very limited in terms of overclocking potential.
 
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Fire Wizard said:
Though please take into account that if you are looking to run your Q6600 above the 3.6GHz mark then do not get the above since these, very much like most of the other 2X 2GB memory kits out their, they are very limited in terms of overclocking potential.
Click to expand...

thats interesting.. Didnt realise that using 2X 2GB memory kits would limit overclocking ability, although 3.6GHz is pretty respectable on a Q6600. I was thinking about adding 4Gb to my new rig and given the fact that I use it for 3d modelling etc I think the additional RAM would be more beneficial in my case..

Im also considering vista 64bit but am concerned as I also want it for gaming - are there are drawbacks with vista 64 & games? sorry, this should probably be a new thread!
 
Wow thanks for the huge post Fire_Wizard and Troop for your input as well

Am I right in assuming the boards you listed in your post have 4x DDR2 slots and 2xDDR3 slots? I have read that some of these combo boards are holding back memory speeds or dont work well with 4GB or more memory. What would be an alternative if ditch the DDR3 compatability? Im not looking to get huge gains but i would be more than happy for a 3.0Ghz+ oc of course

Do you think its worth getting a future proofing mobo? Seems that DDR3 is still a bit far off from maturity and the new PCIe 2.0 becoming the standard soon, i will have to move over to X38 board anyways?

Thanks for the tip on the OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 i will definitely be getting these as I often find it easier to sell off the 2x2GB sticks rather than 4x1GB sticks in the future if i wish to upgrade.

I will definitely be getting windows vista 64bit to utilise the 4GB of memory (although it is painful moving away from familiar xp).

dmx07 i think the reason the 2x2GB kits limit overclocking is because they are usually rated at a lower speed than the single 1GB sticks. I too am interested if there are any drawbacks in using vista64 as I will also be gaming a lot

advance thanks again :)
 
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Hey ironfistx, the Asus P5KC Combo Intel P35 and the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R both have 4x DDR2 slots and 2x DDR3 slots as you have mentioned. I myself haven't heard of any problems with these boards holding back memory or with 4GB of memory or more installed in them. If someone would like to clarify this, that would be greatly appreciated. One of the top P35 Chipset boards is the Abit IP35 Pro, i have heard a number of great reviews on this particular board and from what i can gather, a number of user’s that have purchased this board are extremely happy with it.

The only advantage I can see with the X38 chipset motherboards is the PCI-Express 2.0 however, I believe their is little performance gain from it at the moment and will take a while before it becomes the standard just like DDR3 memory. The overclocking ability is very similar to that off the P35 based boards.

The OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 is great memory for the price it is currently selling for, it is well worth buying.

Now as for Microsoft Windows Vista, When Windows Vista was first released sure their were a few problems with compatibility, however, this has now changed and the support for Windows Vista is now excellent. The majority of the manufacturers out their have now released 64-bit drivers for their hardware and as regards to software, once again, the majority of software now work perfectly fine under Windows Vista. Their have also been a few problems within Windows Vista but the majority of these are now fixed thanks to the Performance and Reliability packs that Microsoft have been releasing along with other updates. Now their are still a few problems around for example, slow transfer rates across networks, from one folder to another but this seems to be only affecting a few people and not the whole user base that is using Windows Vista. Though I believe this is set to be fully fixed in Service Pack 1 (Fiji) which is due out in the first quarter of next year. This certainly isn't affecting me and I think the same goes for a lot of people as well.

Now as far as game performance goes, in my opinion, it is now exactly the same as Windows XP, I notice no slowdowns what so ever. Now I understand that some people are still having a few problems but I believe these are very far and few between these days and I feel that some people tend to over exaggerate things a tad. Though please take into account this is under DirectX 9. Regarding DirectX 10 performance, going on most of the responses from others, it currently isn't up to scratch and is actually better to run it under DirectX 9. Now in my opinion this has nothing to do with Vista and DirectX 10 itself. DirectX 10 is implemented just fine and it is the hardware that needs to catch up a bit. If people disagree with me on this, please post and state your reason. I would be generally interested on your view regarding this. I think their is a lot more to DirectX 10 then some people think. :)

If you are deciding on Windows Vista then you may be interested in this thread.

Hey dmx07, as regards to your question. It is not so much the fact that 2X 2GB memory kits don’t overclock but it is more due to the fact that most of the 2X 2GB kits out their have a high cas latency and there is very little room to improve this from an overclocking perspective. This is not to say that none of the 2X 2GB kits are all like this but the majority are. :)
 
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Hey ironfistx, I can’t say that I have heard much about either of them two motherboards but I am pretty sure both of them are extremely good. If you are looking at spending around the £140 mark then take a look at the Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi Intel P35, i have read quite a few reviews on this board and they have all been excellent.

To tell you the truth though, I haven’t really heard many bad things about the P35 chipset as a whole; they all seem to be great boards all around. :)
 
Troop said:
I have built 3 PC's in the last 10 days, all P35C-DS3R's, all have used 4X1GB ram sticks, not had one problem with any off them (Ballistix 5300 mem).

+ Q6600 in all, and they have all clocked to 3400, 8 X 400 on 1.3000v all prime stable.

Don't know what your doing wrong on yours ? might be worth trying different memory.


Edit,

Doh!!!!!!! 8 X 425 @3400
Click to expand...


Iam using the ballistix 8500C5 stuff which runs a fair bit quicker than what you are using.
Each ram stick is fine by itself and in pairs (memtested) but when used all together it errors like crazy ( on 2 different gigabyte P35C motherboards) @ stock speeds timings NO Overclock
 
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