Old board and Windows 8/8.1 (ASUS P5E Green or Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 ?)

[Blazer7]

I'll be putting some old and some new parts together for a friend. He has already chosen to work with windows 8/8.1 and I'm having some compatibility doubts about the board I'm gonna be using.

I have to choose between an ASUS P5E Green and a Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6.

Does anyone here has any experience with either board and win8 ?

 

[denis280]

Just my opinion.i would use the Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6.

 

[DigDog]

i had bad experiences with (EU) Asus RMA and would go with the Gb.

 

[denden42]

try to find any drivers first for your board before installing win8

 

[SPBHM]

I have Win 8 with a 2005 chipset from Nvidia, 0 problems...
the default Windows drivers work quite well.

 

[Shawn]

Vista and 7 drivers should work fine on 8. You can probably get most/all driver from windows update.

 

[PCunicorn]

Vista and 7 drivers should work fine on 8. You can probably get most/all driver from windows update.

Yeah, this. Plus, the board is the least of your problems on a new build, they rarely even need drivers unless you want to do more advanced stuff like tweaking in windows or sound drivers aren't integrated into windows (if you use onboard audio).

 

[Blazer7]

Microsoft's compatibility center lists both boards as compatible.
GA-X48-DQ6 - ASUS P5E GREEN

There are no drivers for win 8 for these boards but both have drivers for win7 32/64. VGA will be supported for sure and so goes for the chipset.

My concern is that I could not find anyone using any of these boards and win 8. OTOH I found a few reports of people that run into trouble with the Gigabyte.

 

[Concillian]

It's the internet, you'll find reports of problems with any brand, because no brand is 100% faultless and the pool of people who might complain about their experience is ENORMOUS.

Unless you find a LOT of reports of issues, take a couple here or there with a grain of salt.
Just pick one.

 

[PCunicorn]

Microsoft's compatibility center lists both boards as compatible.
GA-X48-DQ6 - ASUS P5E GREEN

There are no drivers for win 8 for these boards but both have drivers for win7 32/64. VGA will be supported for sure and so goes for the chipset.

My concern is that I could not find anyone using any of these boards and win 8. OTOH I found a few reports of people that run into trouble with the Gigabyte.

Dude, you DON'T need drivers for motherboards, unless you use on-board video and audio. Which Windows should have built in drivers for anyways (audio at least). Besides Windows 7 drivers will work anyways. And if you do need on-board video, USE W7 drivers.

 

[john3850]

I gave my ASUS P5E x48 away over 2 years ago and its still works good with win 7.
To me the P5E was the best out of the three c2d boards I had.

 

[Blazer7]

This board is X38 while the Gigabyte is X48. I think I'll take my chances with the later and see what happens.

 

[john3850]

The Gigabyte X48 also looks like it has some good VRM controls.
From what I remember the X48s were just fancy hand picked x38 chips fom intel with a better bios.
The Gigabyte also has dd-2 1200 support if needed.

 

[Blazer7]

The X48 is indeed a higher binned X38. It supports FSB speeds up to 1600MHz has a slightly higher TDP and a higher max memory bandwidth of around 20%.

Anyways, I went for the Gigabyte. Win 8 seems to have no problem with it so far but I haven't completed my install yet. All onboard devices seem to work properly with the generic drivers loaded by the OS. I will post back once I'm done with it.