Comprehensive guide to 965, 975, NForce5 Intel boards.

[yacoub]

I can't be the only one who's looking around at all the (currently out of stock and upcoming) Conroe compatible Intel boards who can't figure out what exactly the differences are between 965 and 975 board base chipsets. Then there are the upcoming NForce5. How do these three differ? How are they similar?

For someone building a gaming rig, which base chipset should they be looking at to find their next board? I don't need goofy extras like wireless or mp3 players. I need a board that's STABLE, fast, and compatible.

 

[dandragonrage]

I'm not an expert, but I'll add a few points to start us off:

975x pros: Official CrossFire support
975x cons: Not all boards support Conroe, price, no official DDR2-800 support

965 pros: Fast Memory Access, updated memory controller hub, paired with newer ICH8
965 cons: Immature, needs newer revisions to bring performance up to par (C-2), fewer PCI-E lanes, no official CF or SLI

nf5 pros: SLI, price, disk performance (over Intel)
nf5 cons: runs hot, not a very good OCer, ?

RD600 pros: CrossFire, DDR2 and DDR3 support?, 3 16x PCI-E slots, ?
RD600 cons: won't be out 'til maybe Sept, ?

I'll try and keep this updated as more people respond (unless they do a better summary than mine)

 

[yacoub]

Another bit of info:

Instead 975X is officially limited to DDR2-667. Intel?s newer P965 chipset supports DDR2-800, but it?s considered to be Intel?s chipset for the mainstream market and therefore lacks support for high-end features like ATI?s CrossFire dual-GPU technology.

From: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/core_2_memory_tuning/

 

[soydios]

Asus 975X mobos run DDR2-800 without issue, and overclock fairly high as well...
I'm picking up 975X for the CrossFire support.

I also heard a rumor that Intel 965P didn't overclock as far as 975X, either through artificial limits or just differences in the design (i.e. 975X is like R580, designed to overclock higher).

985X is for 1333MHz (333MHz quad-pumped) FSB processors, right?

 

[Operandi]

I think a Conroe/Core 2 Duo motherboard guide would be a good idea.

Due to time constraints I was originally planning for a recent AM2 build but now that I've seen how the entire Core2 line performs I don't think I can justify it.

 

[yacoub]

yeah same here!

 

[vailr]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32855
"In a case of great timing, it seems that the ICH8 doesn't have IDE ports, and, well, there is a distinct lack of S-ATA optical drives out there."

 

[soydios]

Motherboard manufacturers will put on a separate IDE controller. For instance, the Asus P5B Deluxe (965X + ICH8R) has one IDE port.

 

[puffpio]

any of those mobo's have good pci-e, sata multiplier support so our vid cards and hard drives wont zonk out when we overclock an e6600 to 4ghz? (ie from 266 fsb to 444 fsb)

 

[dandragonrage]

All of them should.

 

[MBrown]

I can see this becoming a sticky later on.

 

[JAG87]

I just want to know how the nforce 590 will overclock. LOL its my reply to every thread now.

 

[Operandi]

Dose anyone have any recommendations for currently available boards that support Core2?

I'm currently in a situation where I build within two weeks or wait several months.

 

[Auric]

I don't see ye olde 975 in the running. If you want a multi-card platform then wait for ATI. Otherwise the 965 is the best bang for the buckaroo. Any tidgy benchmark performance difference vs the 975 is overwhelmingly eclipsed by spending a fraction of the cost difference on ever so slightly better components or simply o'erclocking a tad (more). More importantly, the ICH8 sports lower CPU usage.

 

[anthrax]

Well, from looking at Conroe performance figures and the "overclocking" ability. Any decent board 50% to 75% overclocking of Stock FSB. Here is a quick summary of the 4 high end chipsets for conroe. the 975,965,RD600,NF590

The intel 975 is the current top choice for the conroe platform. Proven performance with FSB of 400 to 450 reachable on some boards. Also supports ATI's crossfire dual video card tech. Runs with 8 + 8 PCIe channels in x-fire mode.

The intel 965P at the moment seems like to weakest of all of them. It has 2 major issues., upward multiplier unlock for Xtreme series of CPU's.. No dual video card support for either X-fire or SLI. The only advantage the 965 has is the increased performance of the ICH8 over the ICH7 used on 975 boards. This board only supports on video card with a 16x PCIe slot.

ATI seems to have the most promising conroe chipset. Built with the performance market in mind, the RD600. With its small die size, advance manufaturing process. The RD-600 is rumored to be a very good overclocker. X-fire is supported with 8 + 8 PCIe configuration in dual card mode. ATI however offers a weak southbridge solution with its SB600.

Nvidia offers the only SLI platform for Intel. The NF-590 intel edition will support 16 + 16 PCIe lanes of video in SLI mode. The south bridge will also support advance features such as TCP offloading. The biggest concern with Nf-590 especially with its 40+ PCIe lanes is heat. NF's run hot, and this may affect overclocking.


Currently, I would say the best board is the ASUS P5W-DH. However this board is expensive and don't use it in a upside down case like teh lian-li v1000.

 

[dandragonrage]

RD600 board will use SB650.

 

[coolzero16]

The deal breaker for me is that the intel 965 motherboards not support anything above 1.8V for memory. This is sucktastic if you're trying to use ddr2 800 ram since anything worth buying for performance is going to be 2v+....I was reading on the OCZ forums that the DS3 supports higher voltages though.