need advice on hardware..

HornyRhino · 31 Dec 2008 at 22:34

hi,

im in the process of upgrading some of my system which is used for gaming and everyday stuff.

the parts looking for are motherboard, memory and cpu.

the cpu im sorting out = qx6800

the motherboard will need to be sli capable as i have 2 evga nvidia cards
and was wondering if there was any that use the 780i chipset that would accomodate 8gb ddr2 stabley at the rated bus of the qx6800 (1066) as i have seen some people saying that some boards can be a pain to set up and that some dont work stabley with 4 x 2gb ddr2 sticks (8gb)
was looking for an evga 780i board but cant seem to find any...

the memory needs to be 8500+ (1066) ddr2 and compatible with the board chosen above.

OR alternatively would it be better me getting this board...EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLi *** (Socket 775) DDR3 ...
and get 4gb of OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Platinum (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 no and another 4gb in anothe few months

thanks in advance.

Happy New Year

HRhino"

95thrifles · 1 Jan 2009 at 01:21

I dont have any first hand experience, but I hear that the 780's have quite a few stability problems, where as the 790's are fine, but as you say it means you paying to upgrade to DDR3 which isnt cheap
Suppose it depends on how easy a life you want

HornyRhino · 1 Jan 2009 at 01:44

i guess judging from lack of decent 780i sli boards floating around it will be better going for the evga 790i and some ddr3..maybe leave it a months see how prices fair..

cant understand how these companies think 790i is in anyway future proof just by giving it ddr3 as all new boards are a hybrid chip x58 which from what i have seen only supports the i7 cpu....which is overpriced and doesnt compare to the qx6800 enough to justify the price...

thanks for the reply tho...and your system spec sound good

shame i couldnt get simular but id have to ditch my 2 nvidia cards which wouldnt be cost effective

why oh why are nearly all boards sticking to ati crossfire???

AMG · 1 Jan 2009 at 02:45

the whole chipset has issues, but to sort them out its rather simple. But still a big change of it failing. If you had your heart set on SLI than by all means but be prepared that it will have problems, if you do enough research into the motherboards you want, like look at the memory compatibility etc, and also look at other ppl rigs with identical mobos than the changes of it being fussy with memory has been reduced.
or there is I7 but I mean 600 pound (pricing done on riviel e-commerce) for 3 things, this is just the memory, CPU and mobo this depression thing sucks >.>

PCZ · 1 Jan 2009 at 09:01

HornyRhino

High RAM clocks are difficult to achieve with 4 2GB sticks, DDR2 800 is relatively easy but DDR2 1066 with 4 2GB's on a 780 is tricky.
You would need to overvolt the Northbridge and the RAM quite a bit and it would be a pain to keep stable.

BTW
Hear are the Synchronous FSB/RAM speeds for common FSB's
Sometimes referred to as linked and synced by NV folks.
This means running 1:1 RAM / FSB clocks.

800Mhz FSB 200Mhz DDR2 400
1066Mhz FSB 266Mhz DDR2 533
1333Mhz FSB 333Mhz DDR2 667
1600Mhz FSB 400Mhz DDR2 800

Now off course you can run the CPU and Memory clocks at different rates, but you certainly don't need to have the memory clock at twice the FSB.

I apologise if the above info is already known and understood by you, but from what you have said in your original post it appeared you had errored in the maths a bit.

You have a CPU with a 266MHz FSB but seem insistant that you need DDR2 1066 to go with it.

AWPC · 1 Jan 2009 at 11:45

HornyRhino said:
hi,

im in the process of upgrading some of my system which is used for gaming and everyday stuff.

the parts looking for are motherboard, memory and cpu.

the cpu im sorting out = qx6800

the motherboard will need to be sli capable as i have 2 evga nvidia cards
and was wondering if there was any that use the 780i chipset that would accomodate 8gb ddr2 stabley at the rated bus of the qx6800 (1066) as i have seen some people saying that some boards can be a pain to set up and that some dont work stabley with 4 x 2gb ddr2 sticks (8gb)
was looking for an evga 780i board but cant seem to find any...

the memory needs to be 8500+ (1066) ddr2 and compatible with the board chosen above.

OR alternatively would it be better me getting this board...EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLi *** (Socket 775) DDR3 ...
and get 4gb of OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Platinum (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3 no and another 4gb in anothe few months

thanks in advance.

Happy New Year

HRhino"

Go for an I7-920 + decent X58 mobo as much better investment especially as SLI gives much better scaling on X58 than anything else. You can probably get those 2 parts for around £450 + get some DDR3 (go for the cheapest) as it makes little difference how fast DDR3 is to your overall system performance. Then you can easily overclock the 920 to around 4Ghz and it also has 8 threads + will be a very fast gaming setup with SLI plus you have the bonus of a powerful multimedia & encoding PC as well.

Core2 is great but I7 is the future.

If you have to get the QX6800 I would say forget it and get a Q9450 or Q9550 instead as in my experience they are faster than a QX6800 as current games like the extra L2 cache. I used to have a QX6850 & my Q9450 @ stock was slightly faster in most recent games with the exact same gfx card in both machines.

HornyRhino · 1 Jan 2009 at 13:07

thankyou for all the advice

by the look of things it may be better (but not economical/money) to go i7 but it may take a few months now as i only wanted to spend around £450 and do please bare in mind im coming from a 4800+ so even if i was going the qx6800 route the speed difference to me would be astounding in comparison and that is what i think a lot of people in forums like these forget as while they know the ins and out of hardware through their own and others experience yo can get used to the fast speeds and cant clearly relate to people with much lower speed wanting not to stay at the forefront but to be a year behind (now 3 months

) as to the cost of the stuff.

and as to previous post concerning the bus timings..
yes you may be correct as i said im coming from a 4800+ (939 board) so when i see a cpu utilizing a 1066 bus and a motherboard supporting 1066 1333 1600 i presume the memory should be that high to get optimum performance from it. (plus a little for slight overclocking)

thankyou all and happy new year

HornyRhino · 1 Jan 2009 at 13:17

hardware looking at now...

Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
or
EVGA Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
difference of £60

-------------------------------------------------------------

Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail with farcry

-------------------------------------------------------------

G.Skill 6GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (3x2GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (F3-10666CL9T-6GBNQ)
=================

should be ready for around march