Help is need NOW ! please

jamjar

jamjar

jamjar

Soldato
Joined
27 Jan 2005
Posts
2,702
Location
Letchworth Herts uk
Hi All After a lot of thread reading and posting i,m now down to 4 motherboards for my choice ,or really 3 as i,m not likely to get SLI in the near future. They are :
Asus P5B Deluxe :confused:
Intel Badaxe 2 :confused:
Gigabyte GA DS3 :confused:
Asus 650 SLI :confused:

So which one shall i go for ? must say that i,m tempted by the P5B as i like the 3 pci slots as does the Gigabyte too. HELP ! :o
 
There is a bit of apples and oranges in your motherboard shortlist as the Badaxe is almost twice the price of the DS3 and ASUS P5N-E SLi. If your budget is £180 then the NVidia reference boards are the real alternatives rather than the P5N-E SLi and the ASUS Commando is a better alternative to the P5B or DS3, surely?

I've had DS4s, an EVGA 680i and P5N-E SLI and they all clock very well, but the Intel chipset seems to have better Vista driver support (NVidia's drivers for Vista are diabolical) although the P5N-E SLi is more flexible in your RAM choices.

The killer feature for many users though is the extra PATA channel that the P5N-E SLi offers. The ability to use your 2 existing optical drives on separate IDE channels is still a strong draw for many users.
 
Last edited:
WJA96 said:
There is a bit of apples and oranges in your motherboard shortlist as the Badaxe is almost twice the price of the DS3 and ASUS P5N-E SLi. If your budget is £180 then the NVidia reference boards are the real alternatives rather than the P5N-E SLi and the ASUS Commando is a better alternative to the P5B or DS3, surely?

I've has DS4s, an EVGA 680i and P5N-E SLI and they all clock very well, but the Intel chipset seems to have better Vista driver support (NVidia's drivers for Vista are diabolical) although the P5N-E SLi is more flexible in your RAM choices.

The killer feature for many users though is the extra PATA channel that the P5N-E SLi offers. The ability to use your 2 existing optical drives on separate IDE channels is still a strong draw for many users.
Click to expand...
thanks for the reply ,sounds like a real mind blower ! still not sure ,allow what you mentioned about the Intel having better Vista support leans me towards the Badaxe 2 board,then i have looked at this board ,is it any good ?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-222-AS
 
I went with Bad axe 2 , just for the reason it is most stabile platform at the moment. I do not have time to spend mad hours, days into getting board to work propperly, if you want fast and stabile board bad axe is good choice, but there are better oc boards around
 
Why do you say the other boards arent stable or as stable?

IMHO that's a bit of a broad statement which isn't true. I would say bar a faulty component that ANY board chipset you have will work stable out of the box without overclocking or it wouldn't have been sold in the first place.

Choosing a board is about what fits your budget and has the features you need. So if you need SLI you get some Nvidia board etc etc.

I'm very happy with my p5n-e sli which has been rock solid out the box since i built it on Friday evening. But thats not to say its more or less stable than the other boards on your list. :)
 
Jumping said:
Why do you say the other boards arent stable or as stable?

IMHO that's a bit of a broad statement which isn't true. I would say bar a faulty component that ANY board chipset you have will work stable out of the box without overclocking or it wouldn't have been sold in the first place.
Click to expand...

If you have a look at the DFI RD600 thread, the Abit IN-9 Thread or the early EVGA 680i threads all those boards were released with major faults and the P5N-E SLi has major driver issues under Vista as NVidia have been somewaht cavalier in their attitude to releasing drivers. The official release drivers are appalling and definitely still Beta.

Jumping said:
Choosing a board is about what fits your budget and has the features you need. So if you need SLI you get some Nvidia board etc etc.

I'm very happy with my p5n-e sli which has been rock solid out the box since i built it on Friday evening. But thats not to say its more or less stable than the other boards on your list. :)
Click to expand...

I agree 100% - any of those boards are great if you don't need Vista support right now. If you do then the Gigabyte drivers are far superior, but the Intel ones seem the most stable. I wouldn't recommend loading Vista on any NVidia chipset motherboard for another 3-6 months unfortunately.
 
Mista.Gee said:
I've got the BFG 680i and i'm very happy with my purchase worked directly out of the box without hassle.
Click to expand...

With Vista? And the First EVGA boards were utterly disastrous out of the box. By the time the BFGs arrived in the UK the BIOS was largely sorted and I would agree, the 680i boards are now very stable, ASUS Striker and Abit IN-9 excepted.
 
Mista.Gee said:
I'm currently running Vista and expereniced no problems as such.
Click to expand...

I find that very surprising as even NVidia accept that the graphics drivers are Beta. There is no SLi except for the 8800 series, usually the graphics drivers have to be run in Compatability Mode to stop the constant screen fades (with the Graphics Driver has recovered from a serious failure) warning. The newest RAID drivers are very iffy and there is no non-BETA chipset driver for the 680i or 650i chipsets. I have both the EVGA 680i and ASUS P5N-E SLi and they are not as stable under Vista as the DS4's that I run on the test machines in my office.

In my opinion, the boards theselves are fine, the NVidia drivers need some time to be sorted out though. It will sort itself out, it just needs a few months :)
 
I guess that is the one thing about Nvidia stuff drivers....I remember the good old NF2 days there was lot of drivers problems.

I wasnt thinking about Vista when I made my comments which I probably should have (I blame it on a nasty cold :) )

Usually thouhg as WJA96 said drivers will get sorted out in time. Hopefully Vista drivers will be rock solid by the time you really need it for DX10 games :) at the moment though there isn't that much forcing any one to move away from XP to Vista.
 
I will say not experienced any problems at all with Drivers, RAID issues and etc. Updated to P24 BIOS and today still without any issues with or without Vista Ultimate Edition. I'm very surprised with this kit i have now running very well still adding new hardware weekly nearly finished and im chuffed with it all.
 
why are you going to vista now?

its advisable to stay with xp 32 bit until all the drivers are sorted.
 
Junk said:
why are you going to vista now?

its advisable to stay with xp 32 bit until all the drivers are sorted.
Click to expand...
If you want Vista now and don,t need SLI then go with it ,if you want SLI wait a few more months . ;)
 
I installed a BFG 680i and Gainward 8800GTX yesterday alongside some Dominator 8000 RAM and my trusty C2D 6400 and it seems to be ok under Vista 32bit so far - but I havent really clocked the C2D yet (had it at 3.1GHZ on my old board) currently at 2.5Ghz , trying to get to grips with the BIOS

I found it very surprising that Vista Ultimate had all the BFG 680i drivers (from a brief look in the Device Manager everything was working fully) though
 
DS3 - non sli
680i - SLI

Take ya pick.

The ECS680i I have works flawlessly with Vista and the rig in my sig.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom