Is P35 a must-have chipset for Core 2 LGA775? What about VIA stuff?

[GundamF91]

Everytime I ask about motherboard and ram, people seems to always say get the P35 chipset. These motherboard tend to be about 15% more expensive than non P35 boards. Is there really that much of a difference with the LGA775's chipset choices?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

P965 should be cheaper cause it's older technology. A high quality P35 board is only about $71 AR. This is the best affordable chipset to overclock, 800MHz, 1066MHz, and 1333MHz CPUs. Check out my review of Abit IP35-E @ MB forum.

 

[NXIL]

Dear G,

$15 out of the cost of even a budget rig, say $400:

3.75%....

With the P35, you get a chipset designed by the folks who made the CPU as well. And, they write the drivers with their pals in Redmond (they don't always get along, but, it is in their best WinTel interest to make things work).

With VIA, you get all sorts of weird incompatibilities....please trust me on this.

There is safety in numbers....lots more P35s sold than VIA....

HTH

NXIL

 

[Aluvus]

The P35 chipset gives you the best compatibility with Intel's products (every LGA775 processor they've made so far), performance as good as anything else, and a good feature set. The older P965 or NVIDIA's offerings may offer some price advantages, and if you want SLI you need to go NVIDIA. Those are the arguments in both directions, in a nutshell.

VIA's chipsets, other than for their own processors, became largely irrelevant a long time ago. They fell behind in everything but price, and haven't offered that much of a price advantage in some time. There is unfortunately no real reason to consider them for a modern build.