Prices of motherboards for a Q6600.. why the huge difference?

[MrEgo]

So I'm looking at Newegg for a motherboard for my upcoming Q6600 and 8800GTS. I see some boards are nearly $300 and some are as cheap as $100. What's the huge difference in price all about? I have a feeling some of it (most of it?) has to do with SLI, but what else? Chipset quality? Cables? Fancy lighting?

I plan on overclocking my Q6600, so I want to make sure I'm going to order something that does the job.. but I also don't want to spend a ton of unnecessary cash. I'm trying to look at the comparisons on the specs.. but maybe I'm just missing something glaringly obvious.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Marketing and bells/whistles. Check out my IP35-E review @ MB forum. One member was able to hit 4.0GHz with his 6600 and this board.

IP35-E is available at MWAVE for $70 AR.

 

[Nickel020]

The more expensive boards have more features, like firewire, better RAID controllers, dual Gigabit LAN and better cooling. They also often have better power circuitry for the CPU, e.g. my DS3 has a VDroop of 0.3V while my DQ6 has none at all (Vdroop=difference between idle and load Vcore). If you want to get the maximum out of a Quad Core, the better power supply on the more expensive boards will help with that, but the difference is like 0.1GHz at best. I'd just stick with a less expensive board like the MSI P35 Neo2 FIR and invest the extra money into a better video card or so...

 

[Hans Gruber]

I agree with Nickel. I bought the MS P35 NEO-2 FIR which is the same as the P35 platinum minus optical audio, firewire and heatpipe cooling solution that is not quite as good as the platinum. I got my Q6600 to 3.2Ghz with stock voltage and turning the northbridge up a little. The MSI P35 platinum is the best overclocker according to PCSTATS.COM. They got the FSB up to 504.

I also have a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 which is excellent minus the heatpipe cooling of the north and south bridges. I wanted heatpipe cooling for my Q6600 and the Gigabyte boards with that feature were too expensive.

The P35 NEO-2 FIR is $103 after mail in rebate. $118 before rebate with free shipping.

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: Hans Gruber
The MSI P35 platinum is the best overclocker according to PCSTATS.COM. They got the FSB up to 504.

that might be more impressive if they had tested more boards.
At the point of that review they had tested 1 other P35 mobo (Gigabyte DQ6 & that bord's BIOS probably improved in the interim) & since then they have tested 1 other ( TP35D3-A7 Deluxe) which beat the MSI by hitting 512 albeit with a different CPU ...
The abit, Asus & Gigabytes are all known to be capable of going past 500fsb & tbh there shouldn't be a massive spread between them in terms of ultimate performance.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Going beyond 500MHz is all about bragging right. The sweet spot for C2Ds is limited to about 490MHz. Above 490MHz FSB, you're going to have to significantly relax memory timing, which will cancel out any small improvement in FSB. There will also be more heat and stress on the CPU, chipset, etc....

Core speed is KING. Use the highest multi to achieve the highest possible core speed. Adjust memory divider and timing as required to achieve a stable platform.