Mobo questions for upcoming rig

[hsfnewbie]

Hi,

Here's what I am hoping to build in the coming months:

- EVGA 680i SLI A1/T1
- EVGA 8800 GTX 640 MB

My expectations are:
- Support DDR2 ram
- OC a little but not alot
- Can run air cool
- stable and reliable
- supports heatsinks like the Ninja and Zalman 9500
- can support future PCI-Express video cards
- OC is not that important, but I like little perks like looks, copper heatsinks/heatpipes, quiet onboard fan operation, etc

I currently am running a Asus P4C800E w/ p4 3.2 ghz, 6800GT, and 1 gig of Mushkin pc3200 ddr. System is 3 years old.. it's about time to upgrade. I'm looking at EVGA because it seems a lot of people are very pleased with their service and warranty. I don't initially plan to run SLI, but if let's say in a few years down the road another video card comes out, maybe i can just SLI what i currently have and it might be able to keep up?

What do you guys think? Will the EVGA 680i SLI meet my needs?

Do you think Dual Core will be fast enough for the next generation games coming out?

Is SLI a viable and affordable technology? Like if the next gen Nvidia 9xxx come out.. will it outperform the old 8xxx SLI'd?

thanks for the help

 

[renethx]

Originally posted by: hsfnewbie
- can support future PCI-Express video cards

EVGA 680i does not support PCIe 2.0.

Fudzilla - G92 is 65 nanometre PCIe 2.0

"We learned that G92 will feature some minor changes from G80 chip. It will be a 65 nanometre chip with significantly higher clock than G80's modest 600 MHz and it will feature PCIe 2.0 support.

The card is suppose to be launched sometimes in early Q4 to meet the Xmas shopping madness and Nvidia is still on schedule."

 

[hsfnewbie]

scratch the future support for other PCI expresrs video cards...

would the EVGA 680i be my BEST option right now assuming I would be sticking with this for the next 2-3 years?

 

[Heidfirst]

I would probably go with a P35 chipset mobo - they run cooler, Intel chipsets tend to be more reliable & will support Penryn CPUs when they come out.
As for the quiet onboard fan operation imo the best solution from a mobo mfr is abit's uGuru.
Combining the 2 would suggest looking at the IP 35 Pro.

Re. SLI imo unless you have a huge monitor & are running v. high res (1900x) you're better with 1 top-end card than 2 middling ones.

 

[hsfnewbie]

thanks Heidfirst, i'll take a look at that