Intel 965 or 975? or Nvidia?

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Hi, i was recently sold a gigabyte 945 chipset mobo being told it would be future proof, but i have since found out that the mobo doesnt suport the latest 1333MHz FSB (it supports maximum of 800MHz!).

At the moment i am running a P4 3GHz and 2GB of memory, given all the rubish of Vista Activation i need a motherboard which will have some staying power rather than the current board i have as the OS is tied to the motherboard (unless you have a mobo faliure and have to replace it).

What are the better chipsets? I have seen the 965P chipsets support 1333MHz and have a lot of good features and are widely available. There are also newer 975 chipsets but they dont have many features and dont say they support 1333MHz. Now if at some point in the future FSB is expected to rise much higher than this i am willing to wait for 3 months for newest motherboards. Will the 975 chipsets support higher than 1333Mhz FSB?

If thisis the case i will install on the current mobo which at some point will fail unexpectedly and i had to purchase this new motherboard, however as mentionend given all the vista activation cr@p i would prefer to get the setup in place now to save hassles later.

Thanks
 
Gigabyte DS3P should be suitable for your needs. If you want the latest then nVidias 680i is the one to go for. The DS3P is probably your best bet though, reliable and a great overclocker.
 
for future reference nothing is futureproof :p

On topic I would agree with the DS3P choice, excellent contrast between value and features
 
Wait until the 1333MHz chips are actually available. Then buy a board. When the Core2Duo was launched last July/August there were boards that would run it, and boards that would run well with it. You need to be sure you have one that wil run well, or you may as well upgrade later anyway.

And Vista isn't ready yet either. Almost everyone who want to play games is running a dual-boot XP/Vista system as Vista doesn't have proper drivers yet for the better NVidia graphics cards or C-Fi, or a load of other high-end hardware. If you're running a stock Dell, or an Acer then Vista is fine. Anything remotely high-end and Vista is a poor choice. If you have bought your licence then sit on it until the quad-cores come out and buy yourself the Quad, the motherboard and install Vista SP1 all at the same time. Then you'll get a system you'll be happy playing with, and not cursing at it like so many of us.
 
Ok thats just the answer i was waiting for, seems the quad core is the new daddy in town, also in May 07 the Bearlake-series chipsets are being launched. I have OEM vista running on the current mobo i'll sit on it and will just have to have an unfortunate hardware faliure when the new stuff comes out. I only want to do the reactivation the once though, and getting one of those mobos should ensure a lot longer support than going for an stop-gap solution of a 965 (however i agree the gigabyte is a good mobo).

By the way, has anyone had an unfotunate mobo faliure and reactivated OEM windows on a different motherboard? I guess if you tell them you had a hardware faliure they will reset the activations and issue a activation key?

From my dealings with microsoft activation and fixing the PCs at work as long as you can explain to them what happened they are pretty good.
 
Vista is locked to your motherboard? WTF? Just turned me off any idea I ever had of getting vista.
 
oem software is locked to the computer you installed it on, ie unless you have a hardware faliure it will not be transferable. Full retail version on the other hand is transferable but costs at least twice the price.
 
It's going a bit far making an OS lock itself to a motherboard. A lot of people wouldn't realise this when they buy and would get screwed over. Most non-techies would just give up and buy a new copy of vista. It's taking advantage of the people that aren't in the know about these things.
 
Darg said:
It's going a bit far making an OS lock itself to a motherboard. A lot of people wouldn't realise this when they buy and would get screwed over. Most non-techies would just give up and buy a new copy of vista. It's taking advantage of the people that aren't in the know about these things.

Surely you'd need to be greedy, foolish or a dullard not to notice that one version of the OS is a third the price of the other and ask why?
 
in the event of hardware faliure microsoft are obliged by the eula to issue an activation code. if you tell them oh by the way i swapped motherboards for an upgrade they will refuse as thats a different situation. microsoft are currently relatively flexible and as long as your story matches then they will generally reactivate for you. that was the case with XP, not sure about vista but i persume its the same
 
woohoo i had recently installed vista it hadnt done the automatic activation yet! i will roll back to XP, wait for the new mobos to come out, then when i get the hardware whack vista on then will save me much more hassle. kick ass.
 
bonsc said:
What do's it mean "locked to your boards"I was thinking of trying vista soon

The Operating System reads a ceertain amount of information about your PC - the motherboard type, chipset, number of onboard LAN ports, sometimes the MAC addresses, onboard sound, processor type and it sends that information back to Microsoft with the activation. If you change anything it knows you have changed when you try to reactivate. Microsoft now consider the motherboard to be the key component for an OEM installation so if you replace the motherboard with anything other than the same chipset type and possibly even the same make and model it will refuse to activate the OS.
 
Darg said:
It's going a bit far making an OS lock itself to a motherboard. A lot of people wouldn't realise this when they buy and would get screwed over. Most non-techies would just give up and buy a new copy of vista. It's taking advantage of the people that aren't in the know about these things.

Not at all - most people who "aren't in the know" as you put it will buy the retail version of Vista which can be moved from machine to machine without any license issue.
The OEM versions are cheaper - if you thought they were cheaper because you weren't getting the box and MS support it just shows that we live in a scary world where people don't actually read what they are agreeing to - namely the license that you clicked "Yes" on before installation.
You'll probably be surprised to hear that this is nothing new on Vista and the same terms & conditions exist under Windows XP OEM as well - that you are not actually allowed to transfer the license and so it is effectively locked to the machine/motherboard it was first installed on.

OP - the 965 is a newer chipset than the 975, hence the reason it is getting official 1333Mhz support.
As the 975 is now an old chipset and although still appearing on new motherboards is unlikely to get an official revision change to officially support 1333Mhz FSB - doesn't mean that unofficially it won't work of course.
 
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