Help with Wolfdale Mobo

[sp00d]

Hi guys,

I have decided to finally completely replace my aging Northwood 3ghz system, but am so far out of the loop with current technology that I could really do with some advice. I have pretty much settled on a E8400 Wolfdale'3.00GHz CPU and some form of Nvidia 8800 GTS graphics. I would also like an Intel chipset and not Nvidia for piece of mind.

My quandry is which particular motherboard to buy and is DDR3 worth it. I see that the majority of High end mobos that you get things like crossfire whether you like it or not, and am wondering that if I went for an older chipset, would it support my CPU and would I lose a lot of performance.

My requirements are:

- Supports my CPU out of the box (no waiting around for buggy bioses to be fixed)
- Supports at least DDR2 (is DDR3 worth it?)
- Ideally doesnt support Crossfire (ill never use it, so why pay for it?)
- On board Sound
- On board gigabit lan
- Sata 2 Support
- Is stable & relialble.
- Is reasonably priced for the spec (I dont want to pay for DDR3, crossfire, flashing lights and techno music if I dont need to because I dont use half of the stuff motherboards offer nowadays!)

Thanks for any input guys.

 

[jak731]

will you ever use sli?

if not then a good starting point will be to look at either p35 or x38 chipset based MBs

if so look at 750i or 780i chipsets
DDR3 RAM is only needed if you are obsessed with benchmarking, it offers no real benefits over DDR2 for the time being

there is no point getting an pre p35 or pre nvidia 7 series chipset in my opinion.

 

[Hawky89]

At the moment there are very few boards that will support 45nm straight out of the box but its a simple case of getting the latest bios and flashing it to the new board and then you be fine.

 

[sp00d]

will you ever use sli?

if not then a good starting point will be to look at either p35 or x38 chipset based MBs

Nah, I will never use SLI, im a one graphics card kinda guy

I have been looking at x38 and x48 mobos, but the best at the moment seems to be Asus who I am loathe to go with as I have had nothing but trouble in the past. I am a big fan of Abit having had my IC7-G since 2002, but their X38 solution appears to be inferior due to poor PCB design.

Are x48s really just speed binned X38s? If so, an x38 will suite me fine.

 

[jak731]

personally i would get a x38 as we do not know about any potential problems that the x48 may have

 

[kitfit1]

Whichever mobo you go for, make shure that you can control the GTL values in at least 1% movements. Also that the minimum VTT voltage defaults to 1.1v. These are very very important if you are going to be running any 45nm cpu.

 

[sp00d]

Whichever mobo you go for, make shure that you can control the GTL values in at least 1% movements. Also that the minimum VTT voltage defaults to 1.1v. These are very very important if you are going to be running any 45nm cpu.

Could you please list me some Mobos that have this feature please?

 

[kitfit1]

Could you please list me some Mobos that have this feature please?

The one in my sig does I know that some other P35 and X38 mobos do as well. Just how fine a control they allow over the GTL's i don't know, because i don't own one. Hopefully some peeps will come along and let you know.

 

[WJA96]

DFI are lovely while they are running, but they don't tend to run long in my experience.

 

[kitfit1]

DFI are lovely while they are running, but they don't tend to run long in my experience.

DFI NF2 Lanparty Ultra-B, bought in 2005 still running a Mobile 2500 at 250x10/2.5ghz
DFI NF4 Lanparty Ultra-D, bought in 2006 still running an Opty 175 at 289x11/3.182ghz.

How much longer do you want them to run ?

 

[sp00d]

DFI NF2 Lanparty Ultra-B, bought in 2005 still running a Mobile 2500 at 250x10/2.5ghz
DFI NF4 Lanparty Ultra-D, bought in 2006 still running an Opty 175 at 289x11/3.182ghz.

How much longer do you want them to run ?

Well my Abit IC7-G has been running for 5 years.....so that would be nice