Hi guys n Girls my first post

[Quodus]

hi there, Just aquired an intel 840 3.2 extreme. just some question on it as i have found some conflicting infomation on the net!

Firstly it states that it will only run on a 955x chipset . Why is this ? the only explanation i can think of, is at the time the 955x was the only mobo around that could support it ? surely it would run on the new 975x chipset .

Also it states that it runs at 800fsb but i also found some conflicting info on the intel site that makes me unsure ! mine is the 90 nano not the 130 nano (if thats correct!) the both are stated to run at 800fsb and 1066mhz. But other sources state that it runs at 800fsb only. This adds a little confusion.

The mobo's i am currently looking at are abit and asus (both i have never tried b4) are they good boards. atm i am holding back on buying one as i am not sure what chipset to buy. I want alot of functionality from the board which points me towards ASUS lifestyle premium board. But i like that abit 3rd eye 2 board aswell (no onboard stuff like vga and sound no serial connection aswell). The only draw back to both those boards is that they dont have either crossfire nor nvidia sli. I would like the option for a second graphics card at a later date.

Also has anyone had any experiance with gainwards bliss 6800gs goes like hell card yet it looks good altho a little pricy, but alot less than their 7800gs card .

any advice would be appreciated

 

[Bobthelost]

Okey dokey.

Asus is a very reputable motherboard maker, i've been using them for years. Abit is also a good maker, i've never used thier boards but i haven't heard of them being abused for any problems either.

You seem to be a bit confused about what you want your computer to do, fist you want onboard graphics and serial connection (who the hell still uses that!?!?) then you want SLI?

Let's start with SLI, it's not a good investment unless you are buying SLI from the word go, as it is in a year or so you'll start to want a DX 10 card. As such "upgrading" to SLI would not be a good idea. The same goes for crossfire. Also i don't think either of those cards you describe is SLI compatiblie as the 7800GS is an AGP card, i thought 955 was PCIe?

 

[Quodus]

Does seem to be some confusion here . heres what i ment . in regards to the mobo's The PLUS point to the ABIT bored is that it doesnt have onboard vga sound and serial! the gainward 7800gs goes like hell card from gainward is a pci express card it actually one of the top if not the top 7800 card's around (imo). this comp is going to be my next comp probably for the next 5yrs( i like to get the most out of my componants) I agree with you in regards to sli /crossfire . but it also give you a grapics card boost in the future by adding a second card just to keep things ticking over

 

[Bobthelost]

If you are not going to be uprgrading for years then buying a SLI board is a very bad idea. Very, very bad. You'll be thinking hard about upgrading to a different type of card (DX10) in a few years anyway, especially if you ever want to watch HD-DVD or blueray discs on your computer.

The limited research i've done says that you do need a 955 chipset board. This one looks good to me

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131547

 

[Quodus]

It seems very strange that a processor is tied to a particular chipset. Usually some arnt backward compatible but later chipsets like the 975x should house the same processor surely ?? As for the sli debate - okay its not the best idea agreed , but if i am buying a new mobo i would rather buy one with rather than one without! it makes sense . yes theres going to be new technologies in the future that makes older hardware obsolete but its not the end of the world 6months ago i was still running on a p3 1.2 with a gforce 3 ti4200 . okay it wasnt good but it wasnt that bad. If it truely is bad to go to sli then pls state as i might be missing something ?

 

[Bobthelost]

First i don't know if you can get a SLI board for that CPU, so that makes it rather acedemic

Secondly buying a SLI board is a waste of money if you'll never use the SLI features.

As to motherboard support, making the chipsets backwards compatible chains you to the older chips' problems and limitations. AMD change chipset every few years too, so i don't think you can really blame it all on intel (other than what's a rather pants naming system imo).

 

[Quodus]

to finalize it 955x doesnt have an SLI board , and probably never will as there is the new 975x (this is what the thread is prodominatly about seeing whether it will run my processor) the 975x chipsets have support for sli (crossfire)

As for the processor agreed chipsets are going to be held up by processors and backwards compatibility etc . but we are not talking about a generation leap here we are talking about a processor being made (alegedly for a single chipset) to me thats rather un heard of! usually a cpu is made for atleast 2/3 revisons of chipsets . So if this is set instone and it wont run on any other chipset then my next question would be :- Whats so different ? and what tech is my processor missing?

 

[Alaska]

Doing a quick check on the the intel website it appears to me that the i975 chipset does support the 840 extreme edition. According to all of the information I found the 840 EE has an 800 MHz FSB.

Doing a quick check on the ASUS support site shows 4 intel based boards that support the 840 EE. The ASUS P5WD2 and P5WD2 Premium are i955 chipset boards, and the P5WD2-E Premium and P5WDG2-WS are i975 chipset boards.

Although I agree that SLI is mostly a waste of money if you don't need the SLI features, ASUS also makes 2 SLI boards which support the 840EE, P5ND2-SLI and P5ND2-SLI Deluxe.

 

[Bobthelost]

Odd, the site i checked said the 840 was only compatible with the 955 chipset. Shoddy bloody marketing again.

 

[Alaska]

Originally posted by: Quodus
to finalize it 955x doesnt have an SLI board , and probably never will as there is the new 975x (this is what the thread is prodominatly about seeing whether it will run my processor) the 975x chipsets have support for sli (crossfire)

As for the processor agreed chipsets are going to be held up by processors and backwards compatibility etc . but we are not talking about a generation leap here we are talking about a processor being made (alegedly for a single chipset) to me thats rather un heard of! usually a cpu is made for atleast 2/3 revisons of chipsets . So if this is set instone and it wont run on any other chipset then my next question would be :- Whats so different ? and what tech is my processor missing?

You can't get SLI with an intel chipset, you must have the nVidia chipset. For crossfire you must have an ATI chipset. While there is an nVidia SLI chipset available for the Intel platform, I don't believe there is an ATI Crossfire chipset available for Intel at this time.

 

[stevty2889]

840EE has 800mhz FSB.

One of the best motherboards right now would be the Asus P5WD2 premium(955x chipest), or the P5WD2-E premium(975x chipset). The 975x chipset does not support SLI, but does support ATI's crossfire. They are not the same thing. There are also some motherboards with the NF4-SLI chipset that support that CPU, such as the Asus P5N32-SLI, or P5ND2-SLI. Normaly I wouldn't recomend a non-intel chipset with an Intel CPU, but my Pentium-D 805 is quite happy and stable on a Gigabtye 8N-SLI, which was a lot more reasonably priced than the $200+ 955x and 975x motherboards. If you plan to overclock, I would still recomend one of the P5WD2 boards.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: Alaska

Originally posted by: Quodus
to finalize it 955x doesnt have an SLI board , and probably never will as there is the new 975x (this is what the thread is prodominatly about seeing whether it will run my processor) the 975x chipsets have support for sli (crossfire)

As for the processor agreed chipsets are going to be held up by processors and backwards compatibility etc . but we are not talking about a generation leap here we are talking about a processor being made (alegedly for a single chipset) to me thats rather un heard of! usually a cpu is made for atleast 2/3 revisons of chipsets . So if this is set instone and it wont run on any other chipset then my next question would be :- Whats so different ? and what tech is my processor missing?

You can't get SLI with an intel chipset, you must have the nVidia chipset. For crossfire you must have an ATI chipset. While there is an nVidia SLI chipset available for the Intel platform, I don't believe there is an ATI Crossfire chipset available for Intel at this time.

The Intel 975X chipset DOES support crossfire..

 

[Quodus]

Cheers alaska. I did try and have a look on the intel website - but i hate it with a passion a 5yr old could of designed it better (IMO) it seems to be targetted at pple who just want basic info on processors and high end pple who wanna know how many transistors etc it has and other techy things. not for the likes of me

so jus t to recap 975x mobo will support my 840extreme at 800fsb only i will show you what confused me on the intel processor page 1 sec

http://www.intel.com/cd/products/servic...eng/processors/pentium4HTXE/114505.htm

my cpu is listed as the 90nm process not 130nm so here i am confused. also it doesnt reference the 975x chipset atall (i assume this means its not updated)

 

[Quodus]

yes i understand the difference's between sli nforce and crossfire etc just easier to use the term sli

 

[Alaska]

Originally posted by: Quodus
Cheers alaska. I did try and have a look on the intel website - but i hate it with a passion a 5yr old could of designed it better (IMO) it seems to be targetted at pple who just want basic info on processors and high end pple who wanna know how many transistors etc it has and other techy things. not for the likes of me

so jus t to recap 975x mobo will support my 840extreme at 800fsb only i will show you what confused me on the intel processor page 1 sec

http://www.intel.com/cd/products/servic...eng/processors/pentium4HTXE/114505.htm

my cpu is listed as the 90nm process not 130nm so here i am confused. also it doesnt reference the 975x chipset atall (i assume this means its not updated)

Part of the problem here is how Intell names their processors. The 840EE is not a "Pentium 4 Extreme Edition", but a "Pentium Extreme Edition"

http://www.intel.com/cd/products/servic...ea/eng/processors/pentiumXE/210787.htm

And stevty is correct the 975x chipset does support Crossfire..... my error, I haven't built an Intell based system for almost a year, so I'm not up to date on everything that's available on Intel now.

 

[Quodus]

My error, sodding intel processor naming convention. anyway. I think that clears it up 800fsb only. i was thing then on the 975x chipset to go for either the ABIT max (top of the range or the ASUS 975x (top of the range) whats pples votes I think the asus is a slightly faster board than the abit . bit tha abit has no onboard crap like vga / soundcard and no serial . so whats your votes pple