Slow Q9300 vs. Fast E8400 w/ SLI

[Elfear]

So I'm thinking of getting an inexpensive SLI setup to mess around with. Here are the parts I'm looking at:

AsRock Penryn1600-SLI
2x 9600GT

I already have a little E2180@3.2Ghz that I've been thinking of using but I kind of want something new to overclock and I think the SLI would benefit from a faster chip with more L2.

My choices than, for a fairly budget build, are an E8400 or a Q9300. The AsRock board is limited to ~380Mhz with the quad and ~435Mhz with the C2D according to the Anandtech review. So would you guys go with the Q9300@2.85Ghz or an E8400@3.8-3.9GHz? Or would you keep the E2180?

 

[aigomorla]

keep and try to kill the 2180.

unless your playing a cpu intensive game like supreme commander you wont see jack squat in difference.

Save that money, and apply it on something else like more ram or a faster IO.

Even then i think id get a better board over a better cpu. I personally dont like Asrock. Ive had too many problems with them in the past and like Abit, i offically ban'd them in my motherboard selection.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
keep and try to kill the 2180.

unless your playing a cpu intensive game like supreme commander you wont see jack squat in difference.

Save that money, and apply it on something else like more ram or a faster IO.

Even then i think id get a better board over a better cpu. I personally dont like Asrock. Ive had too many problems with them in the past and like Abit, i offically ban'd them in my motherboard selection.

I'd consider a different board if it can be had for not much more than the AsRock ($105). I just haven't been able to find any SLI boards for a good price that also overclock decently. I usually stay away from AsRock too but the reviews seem to love it.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: aigomorla
keep and try to kill the 2180.

unless your playing a cpu intensive game like supreme commander you wont see jack squat in difference.

Save that money, and apply it on something else like more ram or a faster IO.

Even then i think id get a better board over a better cpu. I personally dont like Asrock. Ive had too many problems with them in the past and like Abit, i offically ban'd them in my motherboard selection.

I'd consider a different board if it can be had for not much more than the AsRock ($105). I just haven't been able to find any SLI boards for a good price that also overclock decently. I usually stay away from AsRock too but the reviews seem to love it.

assuming you want to keep the DDR2 ram, your only hope is in the evga 750FTW. However its not going to be cheap.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
keep and try to kill the 2180.

unless your playing a cpu intensive game like supreme commander you wont see jack squat in difference.

Save that money, and apply it on something else like more ram or a faster IO.

Even then i think id get a better board over a better cpu. I personally dont like Asrock. Ive had too many problems with them in the past and like Abit, i offically ban'd them in my motherboard selection.

I know you're not a big fan of cheaper boards, but my ip35 pro seems to have done pretty well thus far with an e6750 and now an x3350. Maybe I'm just lucky

 

[bfdd]

Maybe look for a cheap 750i board? They look pretty promising I've read good things bout the MSI board.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: bfdd
Maybe look for a cheap 750i board? They look pretty promising I've read good things bout the MSI board.

I've been looking into the MSI 750i board a bit and it looks promising. Not a bad price either from Mwave. One review got the board stable at 475Mhz with a quad. Much better than the AsRock board.

 

[angry hampster]

Isn't 750i 16x/8x? I thought only 680i/780i/790i did true full-speed SLI?

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
Isn't 750i 16x/8x? I thought only 680i/780i/790i did true full-speed SLI?

True, but I believe the 750i boards have PCI 2.0 so the 8x slots would be like 16x (1.0) slots. Do the 8800 Ultras even max out a 8x (2.0) slot?

 

[lopri]

750i PCIe lanes are kinda messed up due to NV's marketing strategy, I think. The NF200 chip itself fully support 32 PCIe 2.0 lanes, but I suspect NV artificially cut the number down to 24. (either to distinguish from 780i or due to yields) Then again they decided to give full 32 lanes for their own design on the reference model. So the EVGA 750i has two full 16 PCIe 2.0 laanes.

I believe ASUS board is x8 (2.0) / x8 (2.0) design, and MSI board is.. somewhat confusing but I think it's x16 (2.0) / x8 (1.0) / x8 (1.0)..

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: lopri
750i PCIe lanes are kinda messed up due to NV's marketing strategy, I think. The NF200 chip itself fully support 32 PCIe 2.0 lanes, but I suspect NV artificially cut the number down to 24. (either to distinguish from 780i or due to yields) Then again they decided to give full 32 lanes for their own design on the reference model. So the EVGA 750i has two full 16 PCIe 2.0 laanes.

I believe ASUS board is x8 (2.0) / x8 (2.0) design, and MSI board is.. somewhat confusing but I think it's x16 (2.0) / x8 (1.0) / x8 (1.0)..

It seems a little weird that the reference would be better than the chips from the big manufacturers. I'll have to look into the EVGA board. According to Hardwarezone the MSI has the following:

NVIDIA nForce 200

* 32 PCI Express 2.0 lanes
o One PCIe x16
o Two PCIe x8

Trustedreviews said this about the MSI board "If you use SLI the main slot drops in bandwidth so each graphics card gets eights lanes of PCI Express but because it's Gen 2.0 you won't suffer a bottleneck in performance"

Hopefully they aren't 1.0 lanes because that might actually limit bandwidth from current generation cards.