Which board should I choose?

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

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My friend has asked me to do him a new setup. I'm currently stuck on the mobo. I personally favour Gigabyte and have used numerous boards of theirs and loved them. However I do here good things about the MSI ones these days.

so...



SLI will be used, Sata3, USB3 wont be. Only one or two drives being used. No real need for any special features. A solid board that overclocks is all that's required.
 
1 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
1 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated with a PCI Express graphics card, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.

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Just read the small print. I read the big bold heading, "Supports SLI" Bam in your face.

Cheers for that.
 
Buchanan0204 said:
That also appears to be half speed on the second slot, the same as the first board.
Click to expand...

Unless you buy a £300 board with an NF200 chip all P67 and Z68 boards only have 16 PCI-E lanes available.

It's 1 card at x16 or 2 cards at x8 and x8.

There's no noticeable performance difference between x8 and x16.

Edit:

Personally I'd go with the MSI P67A-GD53.

MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) Review

The one thing to be aware of is the placement of the front panel header on the motherboard if using SLI/Crossfire:

 
Last edited:
GD53 all the way.

While it doesn't officially state its support for SLI, that's entirely down to licensing and the board runs both CF and SLI at 8x/8x speed.

N.B. The drop in performance from 16x/16x to 8x/8x speeds is 2% maximum.
 
Cheers guys. You learn something new everyday on here. I think it's impossible to know everything, especially with new technologies coming out nearly every month.

Looks like the MSI is the winner then.

However, the first Gigabyte board I seen at £95 also stated it supposed SLI/CF with the second at 8x. According to the OcUK product page anyway? Is this an error then if you guys say it doesn't support it?

Cheers.
 
Buchanan0204 said:
However, the first Gigabyte board I seen at £95 also stated it supposed SLI/CF with the second at 8x. According to the OcUK product page anyway? Is this an error then if you guys say it doesn't support it?
Click to expand...

No SLI support according to Gigabyte, and they should know:

GA-P67A-UD3-B3

And even in Crossfire the second slot is only x4 speed.

I think OcUK have gotten a bit carried away with the copying and pasting.
 
Cookeh said:
GD53 all the way.

While it doesn't officially state its support for SLI, that's entirely down to licensing and the board runs both CF and SLI at 8x/8x speed.

N.B. The drop in performance from 16x/16x to 8x/8x speeds is 2% maximum.
Click to expand...

I think that's the G45 your thinking of:)
 
OK. I want to go ahead and get this ordered tonight while the 2500k is on special. It seems the MSI board is still out of stock.

I've looked for an alternative, it seems they are all £140+ for one that will do SLI.

I'm also looking for a decent cooler that will allow a stable overclock of 4.4Ghz to 4.6Ghz. Preferably one with a backplate as I have always found these to have much better contact than the one that just clip in like the stock coolers.

Cheers guys.
 
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