Been out of the loop. Whats good?

[SonicIce]

X35, X45, 975X, P35, P965, G965, G33, G31, Q35. And that's just for Intel. How do I know what chipset and CPU is the best for what purpose? I would use for single GPU, no onboard video, gaming, and overclocking. I think someone needs to make a guide on what the newest and best chipsets are.

 

[DarkRogue]

I ran into that myself.. what a headache.

I ended up going to the Intel site and loading a comparison page with the chipsets I was interested in (Warning: Dual displays will help lessen the pain here lol.)
After that, I just compared which ones had which features and which sounded nice.

As of this moment, X38/X48 are high end, P35 is the current budget king, and the P45 is on the way. The G's I believe just mean onboard graphics, but don't quote me on that..

 

[chriskwarren]

Coles notes:
Did a bunch of research on this and Intel P35 fits your needs right now. I just switched from Amd (been using their chips for about 10 years now) and the basics I found were:
P35 (sometimes there is 'Express' after the P35...same thing) is as Darkrogue said, the budget king. Mature chipset that overclocks well. Only real difference between the P35 and the X38/X48 is PCIE 2.0, and official 1600fsb support. Those weren't important to me. I went with the Gigabyte EP35-DS3P. ($170cdn).

As for the CPU, the Q6600 (quad core) G0 stepping. This stepping overclocks well and has less heat. You will know if you have a G0 stepping if you see "SLACR" on the cpu box id. Most Q6600s in stores should be this stepping right now though. I paired this cpu with my OCZ 2GB DDR2 800, which fits this combo well. This is also a quad core cpu in case you need that in the future.

This CPU runs at default 2.4ghz, 1066fsb (which is 266 quad pumped...266x4 = 1066. Multiplier for this Q6600 is 9, so clock is set at 9x266). This meant that my ram was running at 533fsb, as the ram runs double pumped (unlike the cpu). I simply changed my cpu fsb to 333mhz instead of 266, and that got my cpu at 3.0ghz, or 9x333. this also gave me a 1333fsb. I did this without any extra voltage to my cpu or northbridge, and it runs at high 40c max, which is way below the Intel max spec (I believe its around 70c). For more specifics on overclocking, there are TONS of threads on the Q6600 and this chipset, as it is a very popular setup for overclocking right now.

The Intel boards also use Crossfire, but you won't need it by the looks of it.

Why I switched from Amd: the Intel chips are much faster, run cooler, and overclock better than Amd right now.

Hope I didn't confuse you. The Q6600 is the popukar budget chip, and the P35 is maybe 5% slower than the x38/x48, but those boards are almost twice the price, making the P35 a great choice.

 

[SonicIce]

Good idea. I compared all of the Performance/Mainstream Desktop Chipsets and removed all of the ones that don't support Core 2. Here's the list.

Thanks chris

Does Nvidia have any good chipsets to compete?

 

[chriskwarren]

There is the 780i (DDR2) and the 790i (DDR3). I would stay away from the 680i boards, as they do not support 45nm quad core chips. You may see a few on special because of this.

Another potential issue is some people have reported data corruption issues on nVidia Intel chipsets (particularly when overclocked). This has been identified by nVidia as possible. ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/c...rclocking_Company.html )

This was enough to keep me away from nVidia for my Intel setup this time.

 

[imported_Irse]

Originally posted by: chriskwarren
Coles notes:
Did a bunch of research on this and Intel P35 fits your needs right now. I just switched from Amd (been using their chips for about 10 years now) and the basics I found were:
P35 (sometimes there is 'Express' after the P35...same thing) is as Darkrogue said, the budget king. Mature chipset that overclocks well. Only real difference between the P35 and the X38/X48 is PCIE 2.0, and official 1600fsb support. Those weren't important to me. I went with the Gigabyte EP35-DS3P. ($170cdn).

As for the CPU, the Q6600 (quad core) G0 stepping. This stepping overclocks well and has less heat. You will know if you have a G0 stepping if you see "SLACR" on the cpu box id. Most Q6600s in stores should be this stepping right now though. I paired this cpu with my OCZ 2GB DDR2 800, which fits this combo well. This is also a quad core cpu in case you need that in the future.

This CPU runs at default 2.4ghz, 1066fsb (which is 266 quad pumped...266x4 = 1066. Multiplier for this Q6600 is 9, so clock is set at 9x266). This meant that my ram was running at 533fsb, as the ram runs double pumped (unlike the cpu). I simply changed my cpu fsb to 333mhz instead of 266, and that got my cpu at 3.0ghz, or 9x333. this also gave me a 1333fsb. I did this without any extra voltage to my cpu or northbridge, and it runs at high 40c max, which is way below the Intel max spec (I believe its around 70c). For more specifics on overclocking, there are TONS of threads on the Q6600 and this chipset, as it is a very popular setup for overclocking right now.

The Intel boards also use Crossfire, but you won't need it by the looks of it.

Why I switched from Amd: the Intel chips are much faster, run cooler, and overclock better than Amd right now.

Hope I didn't confuse you. The Q6600 is the popukar budget chip, and the P35 is maybe 5% slower than the x38/x48, but those boards are almost twice the price, making the P35 a great choice.

I'm glad I came across your post. I have both the board and processor and have been trying to overclok (my virgin attempt at overclocking) and am having a hard time trying to read the guide. So is changing the fsb to 333 the only adjustment you made? I was planning on changing that and the vcore but if I can leave the vcore alone, I would prefer to do that. Did you have to do anything to the memory? Thanks

 

[chriskwarren]

I set the volts for my memory to 2.0 (my ram could take 2.3 and still be under warranty). I set the cpu volts manually to the default (not at home now to verify...I think 1.25 or something). Left the nb volts to "auto" and just changed the fsb to 333 and away I went. I also set the fsb ratio to 1:1 (in the bios the ratio reads as "2.0"). BTW I set the default volts manually in each case so that the board would not up the voltage automatically. I also turned off the Intel power saving feature (C1E setting to disabled).

Here is a link I used to help me with this combo:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/f6...-tweaking-guide-26112/

I think a copy of that thread might be on this forum and a few other forums too. Every setting is listed there in that thread, but I think I covered the main ones that I used. I also used the F3 latest bios.

To be honest this was my first attempt on overclocking a modern cpu (I overclocked a Pentium 166 to 200mhz by adjusting my jumpers on my old Asus board about 10 years ago!). So take my advice with a grain of salt! But I did do lots research before I purchased and even verified RMA issues with some techs at a store I buy from, who assured me that this gigabyte board had fewer issues than the Asus Rampage (X48) I was going to buy.

But yeah, with your main concern, on my particular setup I did not raise the voltage on my CPU at all. I am about 20c below the max temps while all four cores are running prime95 for 9-10 hours, so I prob could go even higher no problem. Just decided not to as the room the computer is in can get very hot in the summer so I left as is.

Pretty happy with this setup. The Gigabyte boards have a DPC latency issue (look through these Motherboard forums) that might affect some people who do audio work, but it seems a beta bios fixes this and hopefully the fix will be official shortly. Otherwise this setup is screaming fast, easy to setup, and has not crashed on me once in the two weeks I have been abusing it.