Motherboard Recommendations for QX6850

[guptasa1]

Hey all,

Still pricing a new machine and figuring out parts. When I build, my strategy is usually to go with the best components available at the time, then use it for a long time (previous machine's lasted 6 years, with a few upgrades along the way). I'm not an overclocker (besides using factory overclocked parts).

Anyways, I'll likely go with a QX6850 processor, so I definitely want a 1333 FSB motherboard. I also aim to have a SLI configuration (8800's) and two Raptors at RAID 0 w/ 4 GB RAM.

Is a 680i part my best bet? (And do any of these take DDR3, or all they all DDR2 as I suspect?)

Anything coming down the pike in the very near future I should wait for that'll surpass the 680i chipset?

Thanks!

 

[Colt4545]

Intel's X38 chipset might interest you. It will support DDR2 and DDR3, and some boards will have both memory slots on them. It is supposed to offer slighly better performance than the current P35 chipsets. It will have dual PCI Express 2.0 Slots for Crossfire. It is rumored that it will also support SLI. I don't know how much faith I have in that rumor, but that's the current rumor so take it for what it's worth. Availability is another thing.

X38 will be out much sooner than September. On June 5 at Computex, Intel VP said X38 motherboards would ship within 90 days. The latest rumor mill is that they missed the ship date of July 27, but are on schedule to make a ship date of August 7. Either way, X38 is closer than we think. Kyle Bennett from HardOCP said in a motherboard review dated June 27 to "wait a month or so and see what X38 brings to the table" so it might be worth waiting for you if you want the best of the best.

 

[Blazer7]

guptasa1.

Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6 might also interest you. The board is packed with features and supports SLI. Furthermore, it has a very good passive cooling design/system for the chipset which is a good thing considering how hot the 680 gets.

The board supports FSB1333 and on June 26 Gigabyte announced that the E6850, E6750, E6550 & E6540 cpus were officially supported. Currently Gigabyte is testing the board with the QX6850, QX6800 & Q6700 cpus. This means that these cpus are not officially supported yet but this is normal considering that Gigabyte added these cpus in the mobo's cpu support page as being under testing only on July 11.

The QX6850 is expected to be released July 22. It is likely that by that time, or shortly after, Gigabyte will update their cpu support list for the board as to whether the QX6850 is supported or not. Further to this, it is rumoured that the new ver of the nforce drivers for XP/Vista are expected to be released before the end of the month.

I was operating 6 x 74GB raptors in 3 sets of raid 0 without any problems + 4GB of DDR2 @1066 + 1 x ASUS 8800GTX + E6600. Currently I don't have a cpu as I've sold it in order to make room for the E6850. Like you I'm not an overclocker but I go for the best components I can get my hands on (like my memory 2 x G.Skill F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ @1066 4-3-3-5-2T@2.275).

I believe that my setup is quite close to what you are looking for. If you are not into waiting for the new breed of motherboards/cpus this is definitely one to watch out for.

 

[guptasa1]

Thanks for the great responses! If X38 will be out fairly soon, might be worth my while to wait, especially since there seem to be a lot of rumors about it supporting both SLI and Crossfire, AND it'll be 1333 FSB as well as DDR3. Is this going to be a gamer-oriented chipset? I also appreciate the heads up that it might be sooner than later. A couple weeks would certainly be worth it.

The Gigabyte 680i offering does look like a great board (as do a few other 680i's). I'm just having somewhat of a time justifying purchasing one for a brand new from the ground up rig if something using new technology (DDR3) is right around the corner. Though I am of course considering it.

Anyways, thanks again for the feedback, and any more is definitely welcome and appreciated!

 

[Blazer7]

guptasa1,

I think that the X38 is expected to be released this month but I've no idea when new boards will hit the market. However, this is definitely a high end chipset as it will feature dual x16 graphics support, PCI-E 2.0, 1333 FSB, DDR3-1333, and will be teamed with ICH9/ICH9R southbridge chips.

If Colt4545 is correct and the release of the chipset has been postponed for a couple of weeks it will still be a good idea to wait for it. By the time the new X38 boards start surfacing we will know a lot more on the chipset and how it performs. This may also push the prices of the 680 boards down a little.

The only ?problem? is that even top manufacturers like ASUS and Gigabyte tend to release new revisions/versions of their original boards after a couple of months of their release. This means that if you want to get yourself a ?mature? X38 board you will probably have to wait for at least another 2 months. But again, this is just my estimate.

 

[guptasa1]

Yeah, the revision issue is tricky. I dunno. I think I wanna at least see how these boards perform, etc., then decide based on initial reviews/issues whether to wait a bit or go for it immediately. Thanks for the feedback! =o)