Opinions please - Expert advice wanted.

[SilentBobDC]

Hi all, Silent Bob here to pick your collective minds yet again. After scrolling through what seems like hundreds of webpages, forums and reviews I'm 95% certain that I've narrowed my search for a new motherboard down to two candidates. I've currently left out the socket 1156 platform from my choices due to the problems inherent to the socket itself (poor pin/pad contacts on the majority of products) and the uncertain upgrade path. This leaves me with socket 1366. I've always been an ASUS fan. As such I've narrowed my search down to their two "latest and greatest" boards; the P6TD-Deluxe and the P6X58D Premium.

I've been watching boglwe's thread with great interest as its been great to live vicariously through his first hand experiences. That being said I'd still like to hear other opinions and pros/cons from the users here.

My research has led to the following differences:

- P6TD has an extra 4x PCI-E slot vs a 1x on the P6X58D
- No UDMA/PATA on the P6X58D (only 1 optical drive left to upgrade)
- No eSATA port on the P6X58D (via bracket only)
- 14 USB on the P6TD vs 10 on the P6X58D (2 of which are 3.0)
- P6TD has the ADI® AD2000B 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
vs. the P6X58D's - Realtek ALC889 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC (again may not be an issue as I have an X-fi but if the ADI2000B can handle EAX so I could save myself the creative driver hassle).
- The P6X58D also includes a CMOS clear button, internal memOK, Power and Reset buttons which are a nice touch (although the P6TD looks like it has the power and reset buttons in the pictures but its not a listed feature on the ASUS site).
- The only other bit of note is the second PS2 port retained on the P6X58D but who actually uses those anymore, ok maybe when OC'ing a bit (my current P5B Deluxe WiFi has wonky/inconsistent USB keyboard detection at boot) but you only need the one.

I could always use the 4xPCI-E slot on the P6TD for ASUS's add in USB/SATA3 card but I've wondered if this would be as effective as having it natively (well through the 2 additional onboard chips) on the board. To offset the decrease in USB 2.0 Ports I could add a PCI/PCI-E expansion card to give me more int/ext ports as well. Right now I'm thinking that adding the 2.0 ports would be less detrimental to performance than adding the 3.0 ones but again, I'm not 100% on that.

Well, thanks for reading my ramble and for any input you can offer me.

Sincerely,

Silent Bob DC

 

[Shmee]

I dont really like asus, but I could recomend some other good boards. I currently have a gigabyte UD5, and the UD7 is supposed to be even better. Also, you didnt mention the budget. My top pic would be the classified, as it should be by far the best in terms of features and OCability, except mb for the UD7, not sure.

Also, would you OC? How much? What CPU are you getting?

If you are more on a budget, I would recommend the UD5 or any evga board.

 

[ChorniyVolk]

From what I've read, the Classified board(s) AKA the E760 is only necessary if you're going for crazy overclocks, otherwise you're wasting your money.

One thing I'm wondering is why the P6TD only supports x16/x16/x1 pr x16/x16/x8? The P6X58D I believe has that fault, and don't quote me on this because I'm going by what some random poster on another messageboard said after a google search, because the SATA 6GB/s or the USB 3.0 or both are stealing bandwidth since they're using their own chip or something to that effect; what I'm wondering is, with the P6TD lacking in either of them, why is the bandwidth lacking for an x16/x16/x8 connection like say, the E758?

Anyway, hope I added something to the thread.

EDIT: Here's my source on the bandwidth stealing issue: https://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=72641

 

[SilentBobDC]

I'm probably going with a 920 and will, at least for the time being, be going with a good air cooler (maybe a prolimtech or a noctura, also always liked scythe too). I figure I'd like to run it around 3.6-3.8 for daily use, I'm not he!! bent on hitting 4.0Ghz, I'd rather a nice stable clock with lower voltages as only a few editors I run would really show much benefit from going higher. Daily use will be primarily gaming with some HD video editing on occaision. I'd like to stick around the $300 mark if possible.

While sweet the classified is definately out of my price range (about $450 is the cheapest I've seen it here in Canada and they don't have any stock)

The reason I put up ASUS boards is because I've had no troubles with them in the past. I put together an A7N8X based system about 7 years ago and its still running strong for my parents. My current P5B-deluxe WiFi has been trouble free for the past 3+ years or so too, so they've left a solid impression. I've also done builds for some friends using P5 series boards and they've all held up well too.

I do like the idea of having some USB/SATA 3.0 ports, just for futureproofing and even though these ports use PCI-E bandwidth on the ASUS I doubt I'd ever run more than 2 videocards so as long as I have x16 x16 free and clear I'm good (ASUS's site says that both have the following config: "3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (at x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8 mode)"

Still, I'm going to check the gigabyte and evga boards out again just to see where they fall price wise too. Thanks for the tips and feel free to keep 'em coming.