Which motherboard for gaming ?

coopz8181

coopz8181

coopz8181

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29 Mar 2007
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I currently have a P5k Deluxe wifi/ap & 2gb OCZ reaper ram and I am very sick of it. My computer wont even let me install XP so now im gonna send the motherboard back and hope i get a refund.

My question is which motherboards out there suport SLI (2x 16x pci-express) and can support 2gb's of OCZ Reaper ddr2 pc-8500.

It may well turn out that my ram is f%^ked so i'll be interested in boards that can support quality high speed ddr2 ram :D

Im not fussed about overclocking unless the board is more than capable and will remina stable without the need for heavy extra cooling.

Ideally id like to use two 8800 GTX's in the future, and my current cpu is a Pentium D but would also like it as much future proof as possible for new CPU's that come on the market.

Price can be ignored for performance factor, altho ddr3 ram is still expensive so maybe a board which can do ddr2 & ddr3 would be more up my street.

Thanks in advance
 
Well if you wish to use SLi, then you have no choice but to choose a 680i based motherboard. Nothing else will run SLi unless you use hacked drivers which are really old and therefore defunct any point in using them.

780i is coming out, which is basically 680i + a bridge chip which will run PCI-E independently to allow PCI-E 2.0 specification.

Skulltrail (Intel's performance X38 board) is rumoured to use an nVidia MCP to run SLi, but it's not official.

A lot of 680i boards are reference ones, but there are A1 revision boards of the reference ones which clock quad cores better and there are also non reference boards which also clock quads better as they have the GTREF modification settings intact.

BFG, XFX and eVGA are all reference boards, but the eVGA is the one regarded as the best as they have the A1 revision boards to clock quads better. I'm sure BFG do too and XFX but I'm not sure if retailers separate them under different SKU's.

DFI 680i and the Strike Extreme from ASUS are non reference boards which also clock quads well, but the DFI takes a lot of work.

680i can use EPP which is an advanced memory SPD and can automatically clock memory to higher speeds, voltages and timings. Pretty much a useless feature as this can be done manually.
 
Your answer is no, as the above poster said:
Well if you wish to use SLi, then you have no choice but to choose a 680i based motherboard
Click to expand...

P35 boards don't support SLI or 16X, 16X electrical operation.
 
You can find abit's IN9 32X for £140 this week if you look.
Wouldn't recommend it for overclocking a quad (dual is OK) but at that price it's good value.
 
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