Best Quad Core Chipset

[Svenn]

I've been out of touch with this stuff lately. What's the current "best" chipset for Quad Core Intel processors? I've always been a fan of the nForce series, how is the 790i? I don't have any fancy needs, just a single PCI-E 2.0 slot, DDR3, decent audio, and SATA 3.0GB/s Raid.

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[BoboKatt]

I think most will tell you, X38 or X48 Intel chipset -- Period! You will pay more for these chipset mobos for sure though.

Personally I have been running an Asus P5KE-WiFi (Intel P35 chipset) and my Q6600 absolutely loves it. Maybe I got lucky but the thing has been so stable and cool running since the day I bought it at an OC of 3.25Ghz on the Q6600 and P35 chipsets are very cheap. They are done now, replaced by P45 and P43 but if you have DDR3 already I think then the X38 and X48 (and 790i) are your only choices.

As for Nvidia, their 790i I read were great when reviewed. Supposed to be a very nice jump in quality and stability over the 680i/780i which I also have running my dual core and SLI 8800GTX. However and again if you don't plan on SLI then I would for sure go for a mid range X38 or splurge on a mid range X48 (if that's even possible).

 

[DaveSimmons]

> DDR3,

Have you already bought this? If not, don't! It costs twice as much as DDR2 but is not any faster in real-world programs, just in memory benchmarks.

Also, do you plan to run SLI or crossfire with 2 cards? (A single x2 card doesn't count)

 

[Magusigne]

Yes...

X38/X48 will be for ATI cards (Crossfire) or the 790i is the "best" SLI board from what I've read.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

P45 chipset sounds best for your needs, even a P35 would do extremely well

are you overclocking at all?

do you really want DDR3? it offers marginal performance improvements at best for this generation of processors, and the extra costs means you can even have twice as much DDR2 for less...

 

[Svenn]

I currently have 4GB (2x2GB) of DDR2. I was planning on building a whole new system (the old one is going to be a hand me down) and just going with the DDR3 rather than buying new DDR2 since eventually I'll need to buy it anyway.

As for overclocking, I'll probably try and max out the cpu on stock cooling and then scale back a little for everyday use. I'm currently running an E6600 2.4Ghz at 3.4Ghz.

I'm going to be running a Radeon HD4870 as well, no crossfire or SLI. Honestly, I've always been more of an AMD fan, but I didn't see any AMD boards with DDR3 yet so I was going to go with an Intel Quad Core. Even with Intel processors I've never been a fan of Intel chipsets in general, but I haven't used one in many years.

For my new setup I've been looking at the following:
Quad Core Processor
Motherboard with DDR3
4GB DDR3
HD4870
WD 300GB Raptor (maybe 2 in RAID 0, current system has 4 Raptors in raid, 2x36GB and 2x72GB)

This is all just after messing around on newegg for a little while, I haven't been keeping up with all the new stuff for the last couple years so I don't know what's good and what's not right now.