Replacement for Asus P5E Deluxe - Core 2 Quad, 8+GB RAM, 6 SATA slots, ATI Crossfire

[Kadence]

I'm looking for a motherboard to replace my P5E Deluxe. I have a Q9650 CPU, and I need at least 8GM of RAM (I currently have 8GB DDR2 1066), as well as ATI Crossfire and RAID support. I'd also like HDMI but that's not necessary. The thing that seems to eliminate most mobos, is that I also need 6 SATA slots - most only seem to have 4.

Here's what I believe I need:
*6 SATA slots
*Support for ATI crossfire (I have an HD4870 and HD4850)
*8+GB RAM DDR2 1066
*Quad core support
*SATA RAID 0/1/10 support

The Biostar TP43E seems to fit my requirements, although I'm not sure if it has RAID or crossfire support. The Zotac GF9300-A-E has 6 SATA slots and RAID support (although not RAID 10 oddly) but, the specs only list DDR2 800. Does that mean my RAM wouldn't work (or would overheat)? Also the Northbridge is Nvidia, I assume that means crossfire isn't supported?

The SuperMicro MBD-C2SBC-Q-O has RAID support, but the memory says DDR2 800 for this one as well.

From Newegg advanced search I found these boards as having 6 SATA slots, but I don't know if they have RAID or Crossfire support:

• Gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G
• ASRock P43DE
• Biostar P43-A7

Do the boards listed above have RAID and Crossfire support? How do I tell if a board can support Crossfire?

And does anyone know of any other boards other than those I linked to, that fit my requirements?

 

[Kadence]

I just realized that both graphics cards require PCI 2.0x16 slots, which means that none of the mobos I linked to would be xfire compatible since they have (at most) a single PCI 2.0x16 slot.

However, at Newegg, there is currently only a single LGA 775 mobo with more than one PCI 2.0x16 slot - the EVGA 123-YW-E175-RX LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard (which isn't even in stock).

What happened to all the LGA 775 motherboards with more than one PCI 2.0x16 slot? Surely there must still be some?

 

[flpxjs]

It with the P45 chipset

 

[Kadence]

B43+P43+Q35+Q45+X48 along with 2 or more PCI-E 2.0x16 slots, I get the same results. The results have changed a bit, now for both this search and the search by 775 socket, the P5E3 Pro comes up along with the EVGA, but that has DDR3 memory so I can't use either one of those.

Is there some motherboard search out there that allows you to search by # of PCI-E 2.0x16 slots and socket or chipset, which will contain older motherboards as well? I know the older boards are still available online, but they aren't displayed on the Newegg results, and that makes shopping for one real difficult.

 

[Blitz KriegeR]

PCIe 2.0 x16 was only introduced with X38/X48/P45 iirc. You'll be hard pressed to find anything other than a top end enthusiast board with two full x16 ports. Why do you need it though? Just because your GPUs support x16 doesn't mean you need an x16/x16 config. SLI/Crossfire will run happily on x8/x8 with a mere 1-3% performance loss. Also, most late gen ICHR9 boards (ie X48/P45) should support Xfire out of the box.

 

[Kadence]

PCIe 2.0 x16 was only introduced with X38/X48/P45 iirc. You'll be hard pressed to find anything other than a top end enthusiast board with two full x16 ports. Why do you need it though? Just because your GPUs support x16 doesn't mean you need an x16/x16 config. SLI/Crossfire will run happily on x8/x8 with a mere 1-3% performance loss. Also, most late gen ICHR9 boards (ie X48/P45) should support Xfire out of the box.

x8, x16, doesn't really matter - the issue is the Newegg search engine. I can't get a good list of boards that might be available elsewhere. Also Newegg doesn't let you refine by 2.0x8, only 2.0x16. I think two x16 is more common than two x8, or an x16+x8 anyway.

Newegg doesn't let you search for P45, and the only X48 board that shows up is P5E3 Pro which I mentioned has DDR3 so I can't use it.

I'm looking for a Newegg-like search engine that won't exclude older boards, like Newegg does.