Cheaper 945P Conroe MoBos as performant as 975x if you don't OC?!

[Dance123]

Hi,

Something I've been wondering about for a while:

If you don't intend to overclock (so use it as it comes), will an E6600 Core 2 Duo give the same performance on a motherboard with 965 or even 945P chipset or not?! Both 975x and 965 are really expensive, but do I need to spend that extra money or not?!

Let's take those 2 chipsets seperately:

1/ 945P for Conroe: at first sight the only difference with the 965/975 chipsets seem that it doesn't support DDR2 800 with "only" a max. of DDR2 667, but is that really such a big difference? Aside from that, do the newer chipsets have any advantage over the older (but reliable) 945P chipsets optimized for Conroe?! If you don't overclock, will the performance of an E6600 with a 945P mobo be exactly the same as with the newer 965/975x mobos?!

2/ 965 for Conroe: at first sight I don't see any difference with 975x, so if you DON'T overclock, will performance be exactly the same between a 975x and 965 mobo or am I missing something?!

I would appreciate it if people with knowledge about this could give some clear advice about this?! Thanks very much!!

Regards, Mike.

 

[Dance123]

Nobody at all who can help with the above questions. I really would like to know! Thanks!!

 

[raincityboy]

This might help clear things up or maybe here
I haven't seen any direct comparison reviews.
I bet the difference would be negligible.

 

[FreedomGUNDAM]

just read a review of the Gigabyte GA-945P-S3 motherboard on www.hardcoreware.net where Carl Nelson compares the performance on the older 945 chipset vs 975 & p65

The results where very interesting & surprising. Definitely worth reading!

I'm now considering the Gigabyte GA-945P-S3, Gigabyte GA-965-S3, Gigabyte GA-965-DS3 and the Biostar Tforce 965 Deluxe motherboards for my next build (probably in the coming month).

 

[Gary Key]

We had 945P numbers up in our ASRock memory/video articles. We have four more 945P boards in house now to test. I might get a short preview up tonight with a handful of scores using the same benchmarks we did in the ASRock article. Overall, it is not a bad chipset at stock settings compared to the others.