Advice: Abit AB9-pro or Asus P5N-E SLI?

[VinceDee]

Here's what I have:

e4300
evga 8800gts 320mb ko ac3
2gb PQI MAD42GUOE-X2 800 from this thread

I want to be able to overclock as much as possible on air with this setup, but I want it to be stable 24/7. Considering that I'm only doing one vidcard, which mb is the better choice?

P5N-E SLI

or

AB9-pro

OR...is there another better choice for somewhere around $100?

 

[VinceDee]

Hey guys, I know these aren't necessarily the latest and greatest mbs, but it'd be nice to have some feedback.

It seems like the P5N-E SLI is the shiz right now for many, but I'm having a helluva time getting this one to work properly (and for some reason it can't even boot off of a USB stick for testing). The board seems to be really finicky. The AB9-pro is a much older board but it sure seems like it's set up nicely (2gb lan, n&sb coolers, etc), and it booted up right away, but if I use it am I hitching my e4300 to a obsolete horse? It doesn't seem to be a very well used board, which makes me think it's not that great?

 

[Heidfirst]

with the later BIOS the AB9 Pro is actually a pretty reasonable clocker usually into the mid 400fsbs & whilst remaining on the 1067 strap (the P5N-E SLI switches to 1333 ~424). That's probably not a concern with an E4300 though.
It's also excellent vfm in terms of features.
The AB9 QuadGT is a better overall mobo for overclocking but loses a few SATA & a LAN whilst being a bit dearer.

The P5N-E will probably hit a higher fsb but imo it shows signs of having had a few corners cut. Apart from the fact that imo they haven't produced a genuinely good BIOS for it yet my own pet hate is the soldered BIOS chip - yes, I'm sure that Asus will say that with the various recovery options that a replaceable chip isn't needed but going by the forums the recovery options don't work 100% of the time ...

They're fairly different animals so it's going to be down to you ...

 

[ss284]

I love my ab9-pro aside from the horrible placement of the ide connector, and the fact that it has serious memory incompatibilities with certain ram.

 

[trx]

will Abit AB9-Pro with some new BIOS revision support FSB 1333MHZ non-peryn CPU-s like E6550 and E6750 ?

I've seen that some Gigabyte's 965P boards support 1333MHz FSB...

 

[Heidfirst]

yes, but you'll have to set the BIOS up manually (same as e.g. Asus).