best upgrade options / advice please :)

P_A_N_I_C

P_A_N_I_C

P_A_N_I_C

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Joined
12 Feb 2004
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1,805
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Sheffield
hiho,

current spec

Intel C2D x6800 (65nm skt 775) @ 3.5ghz
Asus P5B DH Deluxe (975x chipset)
2GB Crucial Ballisticx
Ati 3870x2

used mainly for gaming @ 1920x1200. i play fps with lowest settings to get best framerates possible, so as much as i'd like a 4870x2, i'm not sure i'd be making best use of it heh (and i cant afford one either).


problems:

my mindset, 975x chipset seems so old :/

hard drives, currently i can only use 4 of the sata ports, the 2 other ports seem to automatically start acting as a RAID no matter what i configure. i have a sata pci board for another hard drive, but was looking to add another drive sooner rather than later. (so looking to attach at least 6 hard drives (no raid).

P5B is a bit of a pig when overclocking, i did manage to boot at 3.95GHz, but now run stable at 3.5GHz. the board voltage options were revised in a later revision which seemed to improve things hmpf :/

when i add more ram, the overclock becomes unstable, even with more ram volts. which is why i'm only using 2GB ram. i'd like to go to vista 64 and whack some more ram in there but i'm not happy to sacrifice the overclock for vista hehe.


looks like i'm trying to talk myself into buying a new mobo, but i've no idea what chipset or brand at the moment. must be a good clocker. ddr3??

pretty sure i dont need to change my processor.

can't really justify gfx card upgrade.
 
a decent p45 board? Only using one gfx card and some of them oc really well. The Asus p5Q's are quite popular. DFI's are great for oc'ing if you know what you're doing, but thats just me, i like them!
 
ah dont shoot me here, but quick summary of difference between p45 and x45 mobo please.

money is not a deciding factor btw, if there is a great board that suits my rig then i'll pay for it :)
 
cheers :)

used to have xfire on this with 2x x1900xt's, but since the atix2 cards started appearing i'm not sure i would go with the separate card route again, so i'll have a look at the p45 boards :)
 
my mindset, 975x chipset seems so old :/
Click to expand...
975X still flies clock for clock but overclocking isn't exactly record breaking.

As above poster said main use of X38/X48 is heavy-duty Crossfire, they have 2x PCI-E 2.0 16X slots (P45 has 2x PCI-E 2.0 8X slots).

If you think of X as extreme and P as mainstream/performance, then you'd not be far wrong.
 
p45 = 2 physical 16x speed pcie-slots, but in multicard use, speed across 1 or both slots is reduced.
good for single gpu card pcs and unlinked multi gpu card pcs
x38/x48 = 2 physical 16x speed pcie-slots, in multicard use, speed both slots is not reduced.

good for high end crossfire
 
so i was confused by choice...

first checked out the DFi's (used to have a lanparty board years ago which was ace). cheper one (DK?) doesnt quite have what i wanted and the other ones are a bit harder to get hold of but rather expensive :/

but then i took a shine to the Asus maximum formula II because i found it pretty cheap.

however i saw a great deal on a Asus P5Q Deluxe which seems to be pretty popular like you said.

then after reading all i could i came across a thread where the gigabyte boards were being suggested by most people over the asus mainly because it did all the same stuff but was a far amount cheaper....

so any recommendations for this one:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P

good clocker?



:o
 
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