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Asus Maximus or Gigabyte GA X38 DQ6?

S

Silverdusk

Junior Member
Hey guys....

I'm building my first new pc in 4 years. I've rwally narrowed things down to everything but the blasted MB. I can't decide and was looking here for some help.

Thus far my system is :

Intel 8400
PCP&C 750 quad
Muskin 4 gb DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Redline
BFG 8800 GTS (G92) just one.
WD Raptor 250 GB x 2
Zalman 9500

I'm truly stuck on what MB to get. I'm stuck between the Asus Maximus Formula and the Gigabyte GA X38 DQ6 or waiting a bit longer for the X48's to come out?

Any suggestion or guidance would be welcomed. Thank you.
 
Why the X38? You're not going Crossfire, and a good P35 motherboard should be able to take the E8400 to 4GHz if that's your goal. The 750W power supply with only one graphics card is also overkill. You could be saving yourself at least $100 here.
 
Thanks!

I'm learning here and appreciate the help. I'll look at the p35's. and a lesser power supply.

Would you suggest the P35 DQ6? and a 550 psu? I thought the x38's were a little better and I wanted room for expanding.
 
Well let's start with what features you need in your motherboard.

You're only using one graphics card, so that answers one question. You've got two hard drives listed there, plus I'm assuming the standard single optical drive. What's the maximum number of drives, including both hard drives and optical drives, that you expect to be running on this computer?

Do you need firewire support? Integrated RAID?
 
2 Optical Drives DVD and DVD Burner.

My HD's are Raid 10,000 raptors if that makes a difference.

So a total of 4 plus maybe (1) some kind of fan control in a bay.


I wouldn't mind considering SLI or Crossfire in the future. I'm just seeing bad reviews on SLI (maybe it's just where I'm looking) and I'd consider a 3870 ATI, I've just always favored Nvidia's.

I have Fire Wire ports on the case, but think having it on the MB could give me additional room for growth.


I'm 40 so money really isn't an issue at all, since I've got a good job 🙂 ((However I can't justify DDR3 with this build at this time)) I'd like to upgrade to an Intel Quad 45nm later and 8 GBs of memory at a later date.

I mainly use my machines for Gaming - MMO's, Shooters and RTS. I do quite a bit of photoshop for my art and editing.

 
Gigabyte GA X38 DQ6.
Or DFI LT X38-T2R.

If i could swallow the price, i'd have bought one of those already.

Tons of SATA, dual gigabit LAN (because i'm sure you run dual ISPs like me 😉), awesome for heavy OCing...
 
I recently built my Gigabyte ga-x38-dq6 and it is a great board. I am using 2 raptors in Raid 0 on the Intel Chipset ICH9 and a pair of Segate 500G in raid 0 on the Gigaraid controller. Both are built into the board. I am overclocking my E6850 to 3.5 G and there is not one problem. All of the stress testers run without faults. Memory is Gskill PC1000 4 gig total. Currently using XPpro as I am not ready to shell out more money to supply vista with new perphrials.

IMHO this is the board to use. I replaced a buggy MSI board the P6N Diamond that had tooooo many issues. This is a good one.
 
I'd personally wait for X48 which is I believe is due next month, in any case if the prices are to high for X48 boards the X38 prices should start dropping.
 
Are GA-X38-DQ6 boards being cleared-out? ClubIT dropped its listing, NewEgg raised the price then dropped the listing (still has open-box, but no new). It doesn't really show up many other places (zzf does have it). I suppose the X48 would replace it, but if it was a good board wouldn't they hold it in supply until X48's were available?

I was looking at this because I like the port set-up, including dual-LAN and LPT header. Since I tend to hold onto motherboards about twice as long as graphics cards, my next graphics card might actually benefit from PCIe-2. I am not ready to build just yet and I don't want to get the stuff too far ahead and miss the retailer return period for infant defects. It seems if my build window opens next month, and the X48's are not out yet or are if suspect quality, I'll probably have to back down to a P35 or use add-in cards for LAN and/or LPT. I haven't looked too much at the new Nvidia chipset boards, but I got the impression somewhere that their PCIe-2 comes off a bridge downstream of the PCIe-1.1 interconnect. After finally identifying a board that makes me comfortable, it"s a little disconcerting to see it disappearing.

 
Originally posted by: DSF
Why the X38? You're not going Crossfire, and a good P35 motherboard should be able to take the E8400 to 4GHz if that's your goal. The 750W power supply with only one graphics card is also overkill. You could be saving yourself at least $100 here.
Click to expand...

++

Get a Corsair or Seasonic ~500W PSU.

There is no real advantage to the X38 (except crossfire), save some money and get a P35 based board.
 
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