motherboard for q9450 with 7850gtx sli

[imported_zophar]

Hello

My 4 year old rig Asus A8nSLI w/ XP 4400+ died on me recently so I thought it was time for an upgrade..

I want to retain my 7800 gtx x 2 graphic cards in SLI, I've pretty much decided on the Intel 9450 but I've been out of the hardware scene of late and am not familiar with the new nforce 680/780 etc boards..

I'm not looking to upgrade my graphic cards anytime soon, mainly looking for performance for mkv/x264 encoding but I want to keep the system future-proof for anytime I do decide to upgrade..

What are your suggestions for a motherboard ? DDR2 only please, as DDR3 is way too expensive for me ATM

Thanks for your input

 

[maxSe]

I think the consensus is 750i board - can't tell you much since I don't have one. 🙂 I'm using Abit IN9 Max 680i on my backup rig- rock stable for me with E6750 @3.2ghz, 4gb pc2-8000 and two 8800gs SLI'd. It seems that 750i is bit more stable than the 680i (again, not coming from experience but from what I read on the net). Don't bother with 780i unless you need triple SLI - it's just a 680i chipset with a bridge chip to enable the 3rd pci-e.

Just got an email from Newegg this morning and they have a deal on EVGA 750i - LOOK. Might be the best choice for the money, or you can browse the FS section as I've seen 680i boards go for right around $100..
Good luck! 🙂

 

[SFaznSpEEdSTeR]

I second the 750i FTW...Everything you need, SLi x16 x16, eVGA warranty, solid state caps...

Can't go wrong. I personally bought one and loved it but decided I needed an extra PCI-E x16 for a RAID Controller so I went for the 780i FTW...Don't know why I didn't just get a 680i

 

[imported_zophar]

thanks for the input guys, just about to pull the trigger

just a few more questions to make sure I dont make any newbie mistakes --

1. I have 4 GB of DDR2 800 lying around, I notice the memory standard on the board says 1066, I'm assuming it will be backward compatible though with 800 mhz memory?
2. I have 2 maxtor 280 gb hard disks also that I had running in RAID0 configuration on my old rig. These are 1.5 gb/sec. I also really want to pick up a new 3gb/sec 1 TB WD hard disk but don't want to throw these 2 maxtor's away. So can I run the following configuration :-

1 TB 3gb/sec hd - at 3gb/sec speed
and the maxtor 280 gb x 2 in Raid 0 config at 1.5 gb/sec

I don't mind running the maxtor's w/o raid either but my main concern is I don't want to limit the speed of the New HDD due to the limited 1.5gb/sec on the older Hard drives..

Appreciate the inputs once again..

 

[secretanchitman]

Originally posted by: zophar
thanks for the input guys, just about to pull the trigger

just a few more questions to make sure I dont make any newbie mistakes --

1. I have 4 GB of DDR2 800 lying around, I notice the memory standard on the board says 1066, I'm assuming it will be backward compatible though with 800 mhz memory?
2. I have 2 maxtor 280 gb hard disks also that I had running in RAID0 configuration on my old rig. These are 1.5 gb/sec. I also really want to pick up a new 3gb/sec 1 TB WD hard disk but don't want to throw these 2 maxtor's away. So can I run the following configuration :-

1 TB 3gb/sec hd - at 3gb/sec speed
and the maxtor 280 gb x 2 in Raid 0 config at 1.5 gb/sec

I don't mind running the maxtor's w/o raid either but my main concern is I don't want to limit the speed of the New HDD due to the limited 1.5gb/sec on the older Hard drives..

Appreciate the inputs once again..

1. yes it is backwards compatible.
2. you wont be limited in speed...1.5gb/sec and 3.0gb/sec are the theoretical limit, you'll never ever hit those. the most you'll get would be a couple of hundred mb/sec. 🙂