Calling all Gurus: Best Extreme Gaming Chipset?

[Sunbeam65]

If there are any experts out there who could help educate this noobie I would be so grateful!

If price is no object, what is the best chipset and motherboard for an extreme gaming rig?

I?ve done weeks of research and was all set to buy an EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 motherboard, when I started stumbling across a multitude of complaints against boards based on the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI chipset. A host of problems were reported late last year, including interface problems with SATA, hard drive data corruption, crashes, post failure, and optical disk blackout.

The following links are only two examples of many!
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/c...ay/20061214235359.html
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA

Apparently most have been resolved with BIOS updates but there are still some reports of flakiness for the NVIDIA 680i design where different boards of the same model behave differently.

I?ve started to check into the Intel P35 chipset motherboards which are getting excellent reviews, particularly for overclocking, but I REALLY wanted to run dual NVIDIA 8800?s in 680i SLI mode (which is breaking all GPU performance records).

So I?m really in a bind!

The choice seems to be between stability and speed? Is it better to go with the more stable P35 boards such as the ABIT IP35 Pro, Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, ASUS P5K Deluxe/Blitz Formula or take one?s chances with an NVIDIA design such as the EVGA A1 or ASUS Striker Extreme, for dual video? (Of course, there?s ATI ?CrossFire? but all reviews indicate it can not compete in performance with SLI.)

My guess is that any rig builder now is in a similar dilemma, so some expert comments on this issue might help a few hundred people, who knows? So, if any of you mad-modders could cast some light on these questions, and point me in the right direction, I would be grateful?

1) Has NVIDIA really fixed their SATA and stability problems with new hardware designs since last December or are they still offering only BIOS tweaks?

2) Are P35 boards really the best overclockers and the most stable?

3) Is there another primary high performance gamer?s motherboard chipset (for Intel Dual/Quad core) other than the NVIDIA 680i or Intel P35 which I don?t know about and should be considering (such as the mysterious X38)?

Any comments are welcome (sorry this was such a long question).

Help/Thanks!

 

[Blazer7]

Sunbeam,

I'm using Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6 and I can tell you one thing, I've never had any problems with any of my 10 SATA drives (8xHD in 4 0 raid arrays + 2xoptical). The board is rock solid and it performs exceptionally well. The only downside is that it does not oc well with the locked quads. We expect this to be fixed with the upcoming BIOS release.

I have no experience with the P35 boards but the GA-P35-DQ6 seems like a decent choice. For one, Intel based boards do have an advantage on raid performance. The ICH8R - ICH9R southbridge chips clearly outperform nVidias sollutions.

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: Sunbeam65 but I REALLY wanted to run dual NVIDIA 8800?s in 680i SLI mode (which is breaking all GPU performance records).

what are you going to be dsiplaying on?
If you aren't running at 1900x or better SLI 8800s won't make a noticeable difference to frame rates on most games.

 

[Sunbeam65]

Thanks all for responding, sorry about delay, but I'm at work.

Blazer7 thanks for comments. I will move Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 to my short list. Good to know that you've had zero problems. That's good information. Gigabyte and ABIT seem to be the motherboard companies with the least number of complaints and the easiest installations.

Heidfirst, Actually I plan on driving three monitors for a flight combat sim surround view.

Don't know yet which of the following two configurations I will use:

1) Dual video SLI with one output to Matrox TripleHeadtoGo digital. The Matrox splits the single digital output to three monitors for a total resolution of 3 x 1280 horizontal by 1024 vertical pixels = 3840 by 1024 total.

2) Two video cards (not in SLI mode) with two monitors connected to one video card, and one monitor connected to the other.

I don't know which I will use yet because I don't know which one will work better (that's another good question for this forum). Ideally I'd like to drive three 20" LCD monitors at native resolution of 1600 by 1200 = 4800 by 1200, but I'm not sure that is even possible!

Any ideas?

 

[Sunbeam65]

Update to this question.

After a lot of research, it appears that Intel P35 chipset, though perhaps more stable, simply can not compete with NVIDIA 680i SLI for power and performance, particularly if you need to drive three 1600 by 1200 LCD monitors.

P35 overclocking ability is competative, but its memory speed and graphics power is not. 680i has more PCI-E channels and is the only chipset that can accomidate two Video Cards on two full strength PCI-E x16 slots.

Rumor has it that Intel X38 is coming out shortly. The X38 will compete with the 680i in power and features, but my guess is that since it is so new, it may take a few months for bugs and BIOS updates on new X38 motherboards to stabalize.

I'm hoping that since 680i chipset has been out a while that its quality has stabilized, but I'd like to get confirmation on this.

So the question is, what is the most stable 680i chipset motherboard. ASUS has the best reputation as a compnay, but I am having trouble finding a single great review of any ASUS 680i motherboard, such as Striker Extreme.

Is EVGA 680i A1 the best option?

 

[Blazer7]

Sunbeam65,

I don't know if the EVGA 680i A1 is the best option but I doubt that it can rival Gygabyte's quality.

As for reviews on 680 boards, there are some interesting articles here at AnandTech.

NVIDIA 680i SLI: Official 1333MHz FSB CPU Support Arrives

Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6: Quad to the Extreme

You should also have in mind that because of cost and low yields nVidia has replaced the original southbridge for the 680 chipset. At the beginning they were using the MCP55PXE but now they have switched to the older MCP55P.

This resulted in the loss of nVidia's LinkBoost. nVidia's nForce spec page

The good news is that this has no real effect on the chipset's performance. Linkboost explained

Have you chosen a cpu for your system ?

 

[Sunbeam65]

Blazer7, Thanks for responding and thanks for the links. The first one I've already read (a few times over) and its an excellent article. The second one I must have missed since I've been so focused on ASUS and EVGA since I thought they were the tops for 680i SLI. I will read that one shortly.

For cpu I'm planning on the Intel E6850 with a pair of Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D. There's no point to spending $800.00 more for a quad-core which no games yet use, and a 3.0 GHz dual core for $300.00 appears to be the ultimate sweet spot right now. This is confirmed by an article I read, but can't remember (I noticed you selected it also, probably for same reasons.)

But what you are saying about Gigabyte confirms what I've been reading lately, particularly an article I stumbled on just today on "firingsquad": "NVIDIA nForce 680i Roundup" @

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...0i_roundup/default.asp

Its an excellent roundup of all the major 680i SLI motherboard options, with extremely detailed information on all the boards. They speak very highly of the Gigabyte?s N680SLI-DQ6.

They find the ASUS Striker Extreme to be the "King" of 680i boards for features and overclocking but over-priced, of course. The odd thing about the Striker E. is that it has such low customer reviews on newegg.com. My guess is that it has a feature rich BIOS for the knowledgible user, but is harder to set up than most boards, which might frustrate the novices (like me). Also, some reviewers were unable to achieve high overclocks using it, and others got great results...that scares me...The Striker Extreme seems to be a bit of a lottery board. You could get a good one or bad one. However, maybe it has more to do with WHO'S doing the overclocking.

The Gigabyte?s N680SLI-DQ6 fairs well on all accounts, especially component quality, and for a good price. I have yet to see a bad review of a Gigabyte board. So I'm going to read your second link tonight (after I finish writing this book), and move it to my short list.

The EVGA gets good reviews but some highly technical reviews reveal that it runs very hot compared with the other designs with larger built-in heatsinks such as ASUS Striker Extreme and the Gigabyte board.

The wierd thing about the EVGA A1 is that, although its nothing fancy (not to mention the SATA problems last december), it keeps showing up on so many recommended rigs...I've been keeping a list...

EVGA nForce 680i SLI 122-CK-NF68-A1 Selected By
? Maximum PC Dream Machine 2007
? Hardocp Enthusiast Newegg Holiday 2006 System Build Guide
? ExtremeTech's Killer Gaming Rig 2007
? HardwareLogic Editor's Choice for "Enthusiast" Rig
? Hardware Logic Enthusiast Recommendations
? AnandTech renethx

So my short list is now:
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1
ASUS P5N32-E SLI
ASUS Striker Extreme

Sadly, I'm giving up on Intel P35 chipset (or even X38) since I think I really need dual GPU's in SLI mode to drive 4800 by 1200 pixels of screen space (?).

If anyone else has any comments please add them. I want to know the most stable, high quality, cool running 680i board (that comes with the right BIOS!), is easy to set up, and has some overclocking potential. It looks like the Gigabyte might be the one.

 

[Hans Gruber]

According to PCSTATS, the P35 chipset is the top overclocker for FSB. Here is a link.

http://www.pcstats.com/article...articleid=2157&page=15

I opted for the MSI P35 Neo2-FR. Cheaper than the MSI platinum but with heatpipes for cooling north and south bridges.

The X38 sounds like it's going to be a rip when officially released. However, I'm sure the performance will be excellent after 4-6 months of updates to the chipset.

I almost went to the 650i but the P35's overclock a bit better. The 680i is very nice, but still a rip after all this time.

I think motherboards have become way overpriced.

 

[Sunbeam65]

P.S. Has AnandTech done an NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI motherboard "Roundup"?

The 680i chipset has been out for a while now, so there are a million reviews of 680i boards to be found (many of the best ones on AnandTech). But gathering and comparing all the information has proven to be quite a research project. Its been tough to find a definitive 680i roundup, especially one which focuses on quality, stability, installation and BIOS maturity as well as performance. It seems that AnandTech would be in the most prime position to generate one. I'm sorry if its here and I've missed it.

 

[Sunbeam65]

Believe me I would love nothing better than to forget about all this 680i stuff and just get a brand new Intel X38 hot off the press Gigabyte style with CrossFire dual ATI GPU's, but alas, it does not seem that ATI is going to release a video card anytime soon which is in the same league as NVIDIA's. I've read plenty of reviews in which a SINGLE nvidia card performs on par with TWO crossfire ATI's.

Of course there is that mythical rumor that Intel was going to get an SLI license from NVIDIA for X38 but much reading has revealed that this "holy grail" of system configurations will simply not happen, at least not as long as NVIDIA can help it.

The only REAL answer is for some hacker genius to secretly develop an SLI driver for the Intel X38. Any volunteers?

 

[Blazer7]

Sunbeam65,

We have an excellent thread here in the forums for the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. Unfortunately we still have one ?serious? problem with it and that's support. We?ve been hearing for the new F5 official BIOS for quite sometime now but we haven?t seen it yet. The good part for me and you is that the F5 affects mostly the quads. It will add official support for the Q6700 and QX6850 cpus and hopefully improve ocing. Since you?ve chosen a dual core you will have no problem.

When I was trying to choose my next board, I was stuck between the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 and the Striker Extreme. Finally I went for the Gigabyte mostly because of features. From what I hear eVGA has a very good RMA policy, probably better than ASUS and Gigabyte and it is always good to know that you?ll get support if you need it, especially when we are talking about expensive equipment.

From the four you have chosen I would rule the striker extreme out but I can?t comment on the P5N32-E SLI as I have paid little attention to it so far. As for the Gigabyte and the eVGA I believe that you can?t go wrong with either of them.

Hans Gruber is also right about the P35 being a better board for ocing. It is also true that the X38 is just around the corner also, but mature boards featuring this chipset will be available after some months. By that time nVidia?s replacement for the 680 will also be around (C72 chipset). For now the P35 is the best oc board but the 680 wins on graphics (SLI support).

Another good point for the 680 is that it will support the Wolfdale and Yorkfield cpus. Currently all major manufacturers have samples of these cpus and at least MSI has gone public with this.

MSI P6N Diamond cpu support list

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Sunbeam65
Thanks all for responding, sorry about delay, but I'm at work.

Blazer7 thanks for comments. I will move Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 to my short list. Good to know that you've had zero problems. That's good information. Gigabyte and ABIT seem to be the motherboard companies with the least number of complaints and the easiest installations.

Heidfirst, Actually I plan on driving three monitors for a flight combat sim surround view.

1,) What is the highest resolution that the Game will support ???

Don't know yet which of the following two configurations I will use:

1) Dual video SLI with one output to Matrox TripleHeadtoGo digital. The Matrox splits the single digital output to three monitors for a total resolution of 3 x 1280 horizontal by 1024 vertical pixels = 3840 by 1024 total.

2) Two video cards (not in SLI mode) with two monitors connected to one video card, and one monitor connected to the other.

I don't know which I will use yet because I don't know which one will work better (that's another good question for this forum). Ideally I'd like to drive three 20" LCD monitors at native resolution of 1600 by 1200 = 4800 by 1200, but I'm not sure that is even possible!

Any ideas?

2,) The answer from above will dictate what you can or cannot do here.


As far as A Chipset is concerned NVIDIA 680i Reference Motherboards(Foxconn Built) are a gamble as far as what you might get, and have hosts of quirks and odd operation issues.
(are known for poor voltage regulation, and burning out Vid cards and Memory.)

NVIDIA has always had issues with their Chipset drivers, and storage controllers.

NVIDIA 680i Partner Built Motherboards are better but still are quirky and a pain from the Driver standpoint.

I have built and owned NVIDIA Stuff Since 2002 (NF 2, NF 3-150 Pro, NF 3-250 NF 4) and it was better than VIA but I was never happier than last year in September I switched from AMD/NVIDIA to Intel. and have never looked back.

Until you can answer the above questions, you are jumping the gun, because 975X though venerable is the most stable, and full featured MOBO with 2 x 8X Electrically PEG Slots.

I still have my ASUS 975X P5WDH Deluxe with a XEON 3060 @ 3.6 Ghz.

The X38 is the replacement to this chipset, and seems to be a slight improvement in some of the preliminaries.


But Until you can answer the above questions, you might be able to solve this with the Dual Or Triple Matrox unit with a Single GPU....

SLI had some advantages with 6 series, and some 7 series GPUS but now with the 8800's it is not really an advantage.


this is just an example :

If with one 8800 series card at your given resolution you are getting 100 FPS never ever falling below 90 FPS does it justify the cost of the additional GPU to get 110-115 FPS ? is that a wise expenditure ?

 

[Hans Gruber]

My motherboard choice was the most difficult decision I had to make. I was set on the 650i and then switched to the P35 without DDR3 support. My reasoning is due to the fact that DDR3 memory speed may not be able to really take advantage of a processor for 1 year or 2.

I love Nvidia boards having both an Nforce 2 and a Nforce 4 board. It seems that Intel does an excellent job creating their own motherboard chipsets. I just think it would be wiser to spend the extra cash on a better processor than to spend the extra loot on the processor instead of a soon to be outdated motherboard.

The X38 looks promising but it will probably take 6 months before they perfect the drivers to make it a world beater.

 

[Cairo777]

Let me add to this that the DAY that the 680i chipset was released, I ordered an eVGA 680i. I still have it and have never had any issues with it. In fact I am still running the earlier version which had some issues with its ability to run quads well or oc'ing them. Anyhow in the whole time I've had it, it's never let me down. It is blazing fast and I am currently only using on 8800GTX. I have yet to find a game my oc'ed e6850 cannot run. It's probably the easiest board to OC... out of all the ones I have played with in the past.

I have a few other systems and have played with so many others. The one thing I would like to say most about this system is that no matter what, no matter when... when I boot it up it always comes alive with no issues. I know this sounds stupid but I have 3 other systems that at times have issues that just makes me shake my head. I have a crossfire system 2 x x1950 and love it but again mysterious issues at times. I've never crashed this board... even a stupid OC way above its limits and it simply allows me to fix the issue. Right now it's running at just under 3600mhz. The DDR2 RAM is running just under 800Mhz 4-4-4-12. The voltages are low and my temps are very good with my tunic Tower. Anyhow long story short... I simply love this board and always have from the day I bought it. I wish I could have tried all 680i boards. I know eVGA has great support and RMA policy. The boards are active and you can get lots of info.

Pretty much now with the latest 680i boards I really don't think you can go wrong with any of them -- there are countless issues with many other chipset out there from every brand no matter what. If you insist on SLI and we cannot wait for what might come down the pipe in a year it's our only choice. The good thing is that it's a very good choice and suits all my needs anyway.

 

[Blazer7]

I agree with Cairo777, the 680 boards rule when it comes down to graphics and they are quite mature now. Their mem controller is also astonishing. My previous board was Gigabyte's GA-965P-DQ6 (P965), great board but gave me a lot of trouble with my mem and this was the main reason that I dumped it. Now with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 my 2 sets of G.Skill F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ (4x1GB + OCZ XTC Cooler) operate hapilly @1066 4-3-3-5-2T@2.275V and I can also do 1066 4-3-3-3-2T at the same voltage and all this when my mem is rated for 4-4-4-5-1T@2.4V for a single pair. I never expected to get DDR3 performance with DDR2 latencies with this board but I sure can't complain.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
I agree with Cairo777, the 680 boards rule when it comes down to graphics and they are quite mature now. Their mem controller is also astonishing. My previous board was Gigabyte's GA-965P-DQ6 (P965), great board but gave me a lot of trouble with my mem and this was the main reason that I dumped it. Now with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 my 2 sets of G.Skill F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ (4x1GB + OCZ XTC Cooler) operate hapilly @1066 4-3-3-5-2T@2.275V and I can also do 1066 4-3-3-3-2T at the same voltage and all this when my mem is rated for 4-4-4-5-1T@2.4V for a single pair. I never expected to get DDR3 performance with DDR2 latencies with this board but I sure can't complain.

You are running a partner developed motherboard that came to market so late compared to the others that it was almost forgotten as Vaporware by most E-tail Purchasing Agents.... The delay was centered around solving the issues, as Gigabyte took much flak about the MOBO that you had previously.

I agree that the Partner 680i MOBO's are not too bad... but the issue of NVIDIA's Crap Chipset Drivers has been my key gripe with them over the years of dealing with their products.

Originally posted by: Cairo777
Let me add to this that the DAY that the 680i chipset was released, I ordered an eVGA 680i. I still have it and have never had any issues with it. In fact I am still running the earlier version which had some issues with its ability to run quads well or oc'ing them. Anyhow in the whole time I've had it, it's never let me down. It is blazing fast and I am currently only using on 8800GTX. I have yet to find a game my oc'ed e6850 cannot run. It's probably the easiest board to OC... out of all the ones I have played with in the past.

I have a few other systems and have played with so many others. The one thing I would like to say most about this system is that no matter what, no matter when... when I boot it up it always comes alive with no issues. I know this sounds stupid but I have 3 other systems that at times have issues that just makes me shake my head. I have a crossfire system 2 x x1950 and love it but again mysterious issues at times. I've never crashed this board... even a stupid OC way above its limits and it simply allows me to fix the issue. Right now it's running at just under 3600mhz. The DDR2 RAM is running just under 800Mhz 4-4-4-12. The voltages are low and my temps are very good with my tunic Tower. Anyhow long story short... I simply love this board and always have from the day I bought it. I wish I could have tried all 680i boards. I know eVGA has great support and RMA policy. The boards are active and you can get lots of info.

Pretty much now with the latest 680i boards I really don't think you can go wrong with any of them -- there are countless issues with many other chipset out there from every brand no matter what. If you insist on SLI and we cannot wait for what might come down the pipe in a year it's our only choice. The good thing is that it's a very good choice and suits all my needs anyway.

The NVIDIA 680i Reference MOBO's were quite clear cut either you got a good one, or you got a bad one. and 33% were bad the RMA rate on some of them were was so bad at one point that EVGA adopted a very liberal return policy because of a Bill Of Materials error that Foxconn made a mistake with their interpretation of one of the values of a capacitor on those MOBO's they(EVGA) were the primary vendor here in the USA and BFG, Biostar, XFX, and some of the others were not hit so heavily because of volume. The storage controller issues became the focus from that point on.

This was the first time that the Board Build was dictated to the second tier partners by NVIDIA; and then no product development and revision of the design was done in a proactive fashion .. it was done after a bunch of junk was floated on the market, and sorted by their customer base.

My only real issue with that is that we as Consumers were sorting their defectives, and that is never a good thing.

EVGA kept their good name by liberal RMA practices, and Charging back Foxconn, and NVIDIA for the losses that they would have otherwise incurred.

 

[JustaGeek]

I would like to add the nForce 650i hybrid to the equation, with 2x16 PCIe lanes.

ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131153

 

[Mr Fox]

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: Mr Fox

[..]

You are running a partner developed motherboard that came to market so late compared to the others that it was almost forgotten as Vaporware by most E-tail Purchasing Agents.... The delay was centered around solving the issues, as Gigabyte took much flak about the MOBO that you had previously.

I agree that the Partner 680i MOBO's are not too bad... but the issue of NVIDIA's Crap Chipset Drivers has been my key gripe with them over the years of dealing with their products.

[..]

The NVIDIA 680i Reference MOBO's were quite clear cut either you got a good one, or you got a bad one. and 33% were bad the RMA rate on some of them were was so bad at one point that EVGA adopted a very liberal return policy because of a Bill Of Materials error that Foxconn made a mistake with their interpretation of one of the values of a capacitor on those MOBO's they(EVGA) were the primary vendor here in the USA and BFG, Biostar, XFX, and some of the others were not hit so heavily because of volume. The storage controller issues became the focus from that point on.

This was the first time that the Board Build was dictated to the second tier partners by NVIDIA; and then no product development and revision of the design was done in a proactive fashion .. it was done after a bunch of junk was floated on the market, and sorted by their customer base.

My only real issue with that is that we as Consumers were sorting their defectives, and that is never a good thing.

EVGA kept their good name by liberal RMA practices, and Charging back Foxconn, and NVIDIA for the losses that they would have otherwise incurred.

Mr Fox, it is well known and true that eVGA had too many RMAs and that Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6 came quite late in the market but this is not the issue right now. The issue is that Sunbeam65 is looking for a gamer mobo and the 680 based boards are now mature and not plaqued with the problems of the past anymore. From what I know nothing beats them in graphics and the mem controller is simply great. As for the crapy chipset drivers, this affected only Vista and nVidia recently released new nForce drivers for both Vista 32 and 64 OSs (ver 15.08).

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: Mr Fox

[..]

You are running a partner developed motherboard that came to market so late compared to the others that it was almost forgotten as Vaporware by most E-tail Purchasing Agents.... The delay was centered around solving the issues, as Gigabyte took much flak about the MOBO that you had previously.

I agree that the Partner 680i MOBO's are not too bad... but the issue of NVIDIA's Crap Chipset Drivers has been my key gripe with them over the years of dealing with their products.

[..]

The NVIDIA 680i Reference MOBO's were quite clear cut either you got a good one, or you got a bad one. and 33% were bad the RMA rate on some of them were was so bad at one point that EVGA adopted a very liberal return policy because of a Bill Of Materials error that Foxconn made a mistake with their interpretation of one of the values of a capacitor on those MOBO's they(EVGA) were the primary vendor here in the USA and BFG, Biostar, XFX, and some of the others were not hit so heavily because of volume. The storage controller issues became the focus from that point on.



This was the first time that the Board Build was dictated to the second tier partners by NVIDIA; and then no product development and revision of the design was done in a proactive fashion .. it was done after a bunch of junk was floated on the market, and sorted by their customer base.

My only real issue with that is that we as Consumers were sorting their defectives, and that is never a good thing.

EVGA kept their good name by liberal RMA practices, and Charging back Foxconn, and NVIDIA for the losses that they would have otherwise incurred.

Mr Fox, it is well known and true that eVGA had too many RMAs and that Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6 came quite late in the market but this is not the issue right now. The issue is that Sunbeam65 is looking for a gamer mobo and the 680 based boards are now mature and not plaqued with the problems of the past anymore. From what I know nothing beats them in graphics and the mem controller is simply great. As for the crappy chipset drivers, this affected only Vista and nVidia recently released new nForce drivers for both Vista 32 and 64 OSs (ver 15.08).

They have had a history of Crappy chipset drivers over years... not just lately NVIDIA has always struggled with Silicon Image, and NVRAID issues... Out of all the NVIDIA MOBO's that I have owned only Two were not too bad....NF3 - 150 (has a Promise SATA Controller) NF 4 The others were all plagued with nagging issues that mostly went back to their N-Force Software.... Don't get me wrong a well developed partner MOBO is usually better than a reference MOBO anyday. and being late to market is good if you have no issues... I have gotten some great last to market MOBO's

 

[JAG87]

you are at liberty to take my advice or ignore it.


1) Get a quad core. Games are becoming multi threaded (look at supreme commander, look at the Unreal 3 engine, look at Bioshock, look at Crysis) and everything else will run much better too. useless to say encoding and rendering will rip through a quad in half the time.


2) You cannot do 4800x1200. the maximum resolution supported by DX9 is 4096x4096, so take that out of your mind. for a 3 monitor setup 3840x1024 is pretty much the max.


3) Decide between DDR2 and DDR3 now, and purchase your board accordingly.


4) If you want SLI (3840x1024 with 4x AA will need SLI for sure, you are looking at almost 4 mega pixels which is as much as a 30 inch LCD), you don't have much of choice but 680i. If you must go with 680i, your choices depend on what you want to do. If you want to overclock a quad, your safest bet is the evga 680i A1 with bios P30. If you go with a dual you can get pretty much any 680i based board. I heartly suggest the Abit IN9 32X, and the Asus Striker. All the others come second.


5) If you are not going to do SLI, then I strongly suggest getting a P35 board, or an X38 board if you can wait a little. If you are grabbing a P35, go for either the Abit IP35 Pro, or an Asus P5K board (either the P5K Deluxe or Premium). The Blitz ROG boards are impossible to find, but if you find one by all means go for it. If you want to wait for X38, then you can get the Intel XBX3, the abit IX38, or the Asus Maximus ROG board.


6) If you are not going to overclock and decide against SLI, and all you care about is stabilty, then get an Asus Workstation board.


Ask more questions and I will answer them one by one. Cheers.

 

[Blazer7]

Mr Fox I know what you mean, nVidia gave me trouble with RAID drivers in the past too. I'm still keeping a PCI SATA RAID card as backup just in case (Silicon Image 3114 4xSATA). I'm glad though that I didn't have to use it this time. In the beginning I was a little skeptic over a board that came with 10 SATA2 ports but I'm just glad I went with it. As I've mentioned in my 1st post on this thread I'm running 8 HDs in 4 0 raid arrays + 2 optical drives without any issues and that's from day one.

This involves 3 RAID controllers, nVidia's integrated plus 2 Gigabyte 2-port raid controllers. The fact that all these controllers work without issues on a single board is just great. I'm sure that Gigabyte took their time with this board trying to avoid all the problems others experienced with the early releases. The good thing is that they did it and this is a solid board to say the least. If it wasn't for nVidia discontinuing the MCP55PXE southbridge I doubt that there was gonna be a rev 2 board at all.

 

[lopri]

680i came a long way from its birth, and I too can attest that it's as mature as any other chipsets/boards on the market. This is after 3 RMAs (2 from malfunctions/bugs, and 1 for the quad-core VRM update) so I know the initial problems of the chipset very well. I would suggest a Q6600 + EVGA A1/T1 board combo. I think the ultra high-end offerings from vendors (such as Stryker, DQ6, etc.) are overpriced without added values - but of course there is the 'bling factor', so if that's important to you (no pun intended, in the end we all like pretty stuff if all things are equal) then maybe. Before P35 boards came out, EVGA A1 revision boards were one of the better overclocking boards for quad-cores, too. Many find 400FSB with a Q6600 easy on this board. With a Q6600 @3.20GHz~3.60GHz, you won't need a CPU upgrade any time soon.

I am beginning to realize the fundamental similarities among various Intel chipsets, and I very much doubt it'll change even with X38. NForce also has come a long way from back in NF2 days. So both company's chipsets are stable drivers-wise. Intel might be slightly ahead but it can vary significantly board-by-board. NV's reference-design is just as safe as any other P965/P35, IMO.

I agree with AT's official opinion when it comes to implementing RAID on desktop. Except RAID1, there really isn't much of a reason(benefit/cost/risk) for RAID on a desktop system. With 5+ HDDs and RAID, one should consider a dedicated controller instead of an on-board controller. My current setup on EVGA A1 is:

SATA 0 (Raptor X) - Windows Vista 64-bit
SATA 1 (Raptor X) - Windows XP 32-bit
SATA 2/3 - 2x500GB in RAID1 for shared data between XP and Vista
SATA 4 - Plexter DVD/RW
SATA 5 - empty, but routed to eSATA bracket in the back of the case

This setup has been trouble-free in both XP and Vista, with a Q6600 @3.20GHz and 8GB (4x2GB) of RAM for the past 4~5 months or so.

If you're building a system now, I wouldn't bother waiting for X38 or the new NF chipset. Judging from the past, it's very likely both will go through some toothing period.