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Is This The Right Motherboard For Me?

L

LiquidFlame

Member
I?ve been going back and forth for a while now on deciding what motherboard to choose. I?ve been looking at the P965, 975X, 650i, and the 680i. Here?s a little background on what I?ll be using my computer for and what I?ll have in it. I?ll mostly be using my computer for gaming. I plan to get a C2D E6600, eVGA 8800GTX, and 2GB of DDR2 800 RAM. As of right now I won?t be doing SLI, but maybe in the future and I am not into over clocking, but I would like to have the option in the future if I decide to.

As for the motherboards I know the P965 is great for over clocking, but it doesn?t support SLI, the 975X works very well with the C2D, the 680i is supposed to be the best for over clocking right now, but there are tons of BIOS problems with it. As for the 650i it seems to be the best choice for me because from reviews that I have read it performs as well and sometimes even better then the 680i, supports SLI, pretty good at over clocking and even has two IDE connectors which helps since I still have some big IDE hard drives. I know that the 650i can run hot, but does that really matter for me since I will not be over clocking? Basically I want to get the best motherboard that I can get for my money and one that will work well with my components and really use the C2D and the 8800GTX to its full potential.

From your guy?s opinion, do you agree with me or do you think a different motherboard is better for me, and if so please explain why you think so. Below are some of the articles that I have read about the 650i. Thanks in advanced for your opinions.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2894
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI0OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
 
Looks fine. If you're not for sure about SLI there's no need to spend the extra money on a 680i board.
 
True and not only that, from most reviews many say the dual 16x SLI isn't even relevant because nothing really uses it and that dual 8x SLI is just as good. I forgot to ask above too, has anyone had problems with the 650i like the 680i with all the BIOS problems or does anyone know if there are problems with the 650i?
 
Thanks moosey for the reply, but does anyone else have any suggestions or opinions? Please give me some information because I really want to build my rig soon, but I don?t want to regret buying this motherboard if there is something else better out there for me.
 
Keep in mind that you will only "maybe want" SLI for resolutions over 1900x1200 with max settings in the most modern games out there. I.E. A single 8800 GTX will set you up good for several months if not the rest of the year on anything except a 30" LCD.

Tech Reports did a review of 8800 SLI in modern games a couple of days ago...I summarized their conclusions in my statement above.

That being said... I vote for a good 965P board: the Asus P5B-deluxe, gigabyte DS3 or DQ6, MSI platinum... probably can't wrong with any of those boards. Very full featured boards that are stable, fast at stock speeds, and OC well. Gigabyte is supposed to be releasing rev 3.3 of their 965 boards pretty soon which will support 1333 FSB processors

I am getting one of these 965 boards later this week for a new rig I'm building.

Edit: Drawback of 965 boards...support for IDE is not so hot. With the availability of SATA optical drives this is not so much of an issue anymore.
 
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