Which board and chipset for the conroe?

skyro · 12 May 2007 at 16:38

Hi,

I'm building a new system next week, going to get a conroe, but I was wondering which chipset I should go for. I want one that will be future proof in terms of upgrading in 2-3years time so I'm guessing it'll be the P35 at this moment, but there is also the not so well advertised nforce 680 - personally I haven't heard or seen much about this at all so if anyone can suggest a good motherboard & chipset it'd be great. Ideally I guess it'll have to support the 1333mhz FSB and the new intel cpu coming soon.

Will_3rd · 12 May 2007 at 16:41

Most are still pretty flaky, the DS3P which has the 965 chipset is the best of the bunch IMO plus it has 1333fsb

Mul · 12 May 2007 at 16:41

For future upgradability, P35 is the only one that stands out right now. No other board will support Penryn 45nm as far as I'm aware due to a new VRM, a physical change to the motherboards.

Mul

WJA96 · 12 May 2007 at 18:32

If it has to support Penryn then at the moment it has to be a P35 board. All the others just clock to 1333MHz - so much for future-proofing :rolleyes:

Northwind · 12 May 2007 at 18:37

TBH futureproofing a PC is like waterproofing a sieve, I'd just get something that works for now myself.

skyro · 12 May 2007 at 21:14

Northwind said:
TBH futureproofing a PC is like waterproofing a sieve, I'd just get something that works for now myself.

Aye, you can never predict what may happen, but it's like business, you'd still want to make sure your investment gets good returns. Otherwise it's my wallet that will be like a sieve.

Anyhow, I wonder wether we'll see more P35 boards out early next week? Otherwise I'm going for the Asus p35-Deluxe wifi

Oh and one more question. The P35 says crossfire ready, does that mean it cannot use nvidia's SLI and is there actually any advantage to getting a ATI card for the P35 as opposed to the nvidia?

luismenendez · 13 May 2007 at 12:30

Northwind said:
TBH futureproofing a PC is like waterproofing a sieve, I'd just get something that works for now myself.

I totally agree.

Next year new cpus new mobo

The only new component I am planning to keep for a couple of years is the PSU

Jokester · 13 May 2007 at 13:08

Mul said:
For future upgradability, P35 is the only one that stands out right now. No other board will support Penryn 45nm as far as I'm aware due to a new VRM, a physical change to the motherboards.

Mul

Most of the current boards support the necessary VRM for Penryn but as WJA96 points out it will depend on the FSB and whether a simple BIOS update can meet that (no reason to suspect they can't since most boards will do over 400MHz with a dual core Conroe anyway).

Jokester

Jokester · 13 May 2007 at 13:10

skyro said:
Oh and one more question. The P35 says crossfire ready, does that mean it cannot use nvidia's SLI and is there actually any advantage to getting a ATI card for the P35 as opposed to the nvidia?

Yeah you can't run SLI on the P35 (ignoring the hacked drivers). There's no disadvantage in using a single Nvidia card on a P35 though - I'm doing that at the moment.

Jokester

Mul · 13 May 2007 at 13:41

Jokester said:
Most of the current boards support the necessary VRM for Penryn but as WJA96 points out it will depend on the FSB and whether a simple BIOS update can meet that (no reason to suspect they can't since most boards will do over 400MHz with a dual core Conroe anyway).

Jokester

Right ok. Was always under the impression that Penryn used a totally different VRM. Here's hoping my coming DFI ICFX3200 RD600 will support it later on, but I'm a bit skeptical since this board is somewhat unpopular. It does have 1333FSB support however.

Mul