Need help choosing a motherboard please!!

Notorious Lee

Notorious Lee

Notorious Lee

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1 Jan 2007
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I am currently putting together a shopping list to build my pc & I know I want an Intel quad core processor but i'm after advice on which would be the best motherboard to go for.

I am looking to build a powerful pc which can run the latest games well as using it for other things but mainly gaming.

Now the motherboards I have been looking at are as follows: -

1) Asus P5N32-e SLi
2) Asus P5B-E Plus
3) EVGA NForce 680
4) Asus Striker Extreme NForce 680

I am after some advice on which one I should go for & why & if there is another motherboard I haven't listed by all means I am open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance.
 
HI,

Well, i went for Bad axe 2 after long study of many boards.
I went for it due to great stability out of the box, and i was not wrong.
I tought it will not be best overclocker, bu i was wrong , it clocks nicely, went up to 3.2 with 2 gigs of geil 4-4-4-12 ram.

I would recomend it to anyone who does not have time to read through wast posts of how to get it to work propperly.

Overall package is good, great cables, excelent literature, all in all great buy
 
I would also suggest you expand your range choice downwards unless you are going to be running a very large screen. The extra PCIe lanes on the graphics only really become apparent at very high resolutions (2560x2048 type resolutions).

I couldn't honestly recommend EVGA at this point as there is another thread in the forum at the moment about their support. The user had a motherboard that broke, the retailer appears to have washed it's hands of him and EVGA's direct RMA system only works in the US apparently. As there are versions of that board labelled up by manufacturers who do have UK support, I would have to suggest that you go with one of those instead eg. ASUS. BFG or Abit. Sean from Abit support is a user on these forums and is very helpful.
 
i was picking a new 775 board 2 days ago and was frankly completly confused but the ridiculous asus lineup. no one needs that many options when choosing a board. i looked at the P5B-E Plus and then at the badaxe 2 and then at the DS3 and eventaully chose the DS3. partly it was budget contrained which took out the badaxe 2 and secondly the DS3 is hugly popular for a reason, it gets the job done, overclocks well, takes quad cores. for 75 quid you cant argue with that.
 
BUFF said:
abit 965 QuadGT is also a very good competitor to the P5B
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Having owned both I find the QuadGT is the far superior board and am suprised that it's not more popular.
500MHz+ on a 1066 strap will take on all comers as far as performance goes.
The only remaining negative (since the release of the latest beta BIOS) being the RAID issues which I understand should be resolved soon enough.
 
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nightic said:
Having owned both I find the QuadGT is the far superior board and am suprised that it's not more popular.
500MHz+ on a 1066 strap will take on all comers as far as performance goes.
The only remaining negative (since the release of the latest beta BIOS) being the RAID issues which I understand should be resolved soon enough.
Click to expand...
All boils down to a few things, people thought the DFI R600 board was going to be the lost Holy Grail, I kinda find it rather amusing in a sadistic way because how much publicity & rave reviews its had - hardly any lol, too many people on the Asus/DFI bandwagon, Asus bring out board after board its all one major gimmick, same goes with Ram paying £120 or £400 its gonna make **** all difference really, all marketing hype etc to make people spend money.

Saying all this I was one of a few people who did buy the Abit IN9 32X-MAX which I coudnt clock over 3.2 ghz maybe it was me, but still the board wasnt anywhere worth £252 at the time, I would expect a flawless mobo for that money without question & it didnt live upto the expectations, maybe a few bios down the line it will be better....

Having read more into the Abit AB9 Quad GT it looks a really capable board, seen some decent clocks on various forums, cant wait for Monday. :)
 
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I think you need to list what you need from a motherboard. Prices are ridiculous now for the top ones and they are not necessarily any faster than cheaper models, only advantage being masses of extra and often useless stuff included.

I'd readily reccomend the p5n-e sli it's half the price of some of those boards but is as fast and has everything most people would need plus it's made by a top brand reliable manufacturer.
 
Notorious Lee said:
So what is the main difference between the 650i & 680i chipset?
Click to expand...

Not a lot
"The nForce 680i SLI supports two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots for SLI technology, but in addition to the two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots, nForce 680i SLI motherboards will feature a third PCI Express x16 slot. The third slot will run at half-speed and have an x8 electrical interface, enough for physics processing. Other notable features of the nForce 680i SLI include LinkBoost, FirstPacket, DualNet, high definition audio and MediaShield technologies.

The nForce 650i SLI and 650i Ultra are more aimed at the lower end of the market. These two chipsets are almost identical, apart from the SLI support on the 650i SLI. The nForce 650i chipsets lack most of the features of the nForce 680i SLI, but it still features a dual-channel DDR2-800 memory controller, Gigabit Ethernet with FirstPacket technology and high definition audio. Interestingly enough, the nForce 650i series support two IDE channels where the nForce 680i SLI only supports one. "

So basically if you want SLI at 16x then you need a 680i otherwise if like most folks your happy with a single 16x card then go for the 650i. In fact it's been shown in SLI the difference with available cards at the moment including GTX is minimal with 16x SLI. But the premium price difference seems to be huge.
 
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