Which budget board

[seanc85]

Torn between these 2 at this point, they seem to be essentially the same specs, and only a $10 price diffeerence

Any particualr reason to use one over the other?
Or specific reasons for a more expensive P35 board?

will be used with a wolfdale 8400 cpu

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...7031%2CN82E16813128059

 

[KenAF]

As far as I know, Abit IP35-E doesn't fully support Wolfdale at this point. I would suggest the DS3L.

 

[seanc85]

ok, seems like the gigabyte line is the way to go

having seen nothing compelling in the features comparison, is there any strong reason to spend the extra money for the higher end p35 boards?

 

[KenAF]

Originally posted by: seanc85
ok, seems like the gigabyte line is the way to go

having seen nothing compelling in the features comparison, is there any strong reason to spend the extra money for the higher end p35 boards?

IMO, no -- unless you have a 27-30" monitor and plan to use SLI or RAID. Either will require a more expensive board.

A <$90 board like the DS3L will get you at least 3.6GHz on the E8400 with a quality heatsink (ex: Ultima90 or Ultra120 Extreme). If you are lucky, you may hit 3.8-4.0GHz. Spending extra on a $150-$250 motherboard may get you an extra 200-300MHz on the overclock, assuming you've got the right memory. But beyond 3.6Ghz, there's really no point aside from bragging rights, because you'll be graphics limited in games.

No matter what P35 board you buy today, it will be obsolete when the P45/ICH10 solution is released in three months. And Nehalem will require completely new motherboards (with a new socket) when it ships around this time next year.

I would save the money and put it toward a next-generation Nehalem CPU and motherboard in 18-24 months. Or if you are a gamer, put it toward a new graphics card like the 8800GT or the upcoming 9600GT (depending on your monitor size).

 

[DSF]

Seanc, I have the P35-DS3L and have no complaints. It's been rock solid stable, and overclocks pretty well. If you don't need the extra bells and whistles like RAID or a second PCI-e x16 slot, don't pay for them.

 

[bigsnyder]

No matter what P35 board you buy today, it will be obsolete when the P45/ICH10 solution is released in three months.

Not really. When the P45 comes out, the performance of the P35 will not suddenly change.
Great boards will always be great boards as long as you have not exhausted your upgrade
path. I am running an e6400 cpu from the first core2 release. There are certainly many
more socket 775 processors on the market to keep my rig going for a while, such as a
quad core chip. Unless pci-e 2.0 is REALLY important to you, there is not much the P45
has to offer (granted also better crossfire, but for single GPU solutions this a moot point).
With prices on some of the X38 boards not much more expensive than upper tier of P35
boards, the same pci-e 2.0 and better crossfire support can be bought now. I feel its
boils down to this (as another user on the forum put it), if your rig is good enough to wait,
then you have nothing to lose by waiting. If you are currently bottlenecked and your rig is
not doing what you need it to do, then upgrade now. Some of the P35 boards are really
good values, and the price premium on the P45 IMO will not really be worth the difference.

 

[Modelworks]

I have the P35-DS3L.
Currently using it in workstations and its performed well.
Very stable, I was able to run one yesterday with an overclocked E4500 and 3d rendering a scene of 45 million polygons. If anything would have caused a board to fail that would have, considering it made the pc use over 12GB of swap file (8GB physical ram), so there was constsant hard drive I/O going on , and over 5 hours to render.

CPU(both cores) and GPU on the video card were at 100% the entire time.

I kept waiting for the application to error out or windows to crash.
It didn't !

 

[KenAF]

bigsnyder,

The P45/ICH10 combo is expected to improve memory, disk, and ethernet performance and it will be released at about the same part cost as the P35+ICH9R. Do a search on ICH10 for a few more tidbits. Anyone who knows anything is still under NDA, but here's an old quote from VR-Zone:

Intel has finished the work on ICH9 Southbridge and now working on ICH10 slated for launch next year. Intel has removed PS/2 and LPT ports support from the chipset. The new ICHs will include a new 10GB Ethernet controller and together with some new technology from Intel, it will reduce load on CPU and improve power consumption. Intel will include a Wireless Ethernet controller into ICH10 too. The Bearlake motherboard will employ IAMT technology and hardware based firewall. A performance improvement of 15% is expected with the new chipsets working together with Conroe [and other Core2] processors.

Intel will use the same ICH10 southbridge with Nehalem.

I was not suggesting that anyone wait. As you said, P35 boards like the DS3L are an excellent value today and that will not change anytime soon. But I feel that many who spend $250 on a board today will be disappointed (buyers remorse) when the P45/ICH10 is released in a few months.

 

[Mondoman]

But who would spend $250 on a board today when you can get just about everything for $150 (GA-P35-DS3P)?

 

[bigsnyder]

I am just skeptical that the P45 will bring noticable performance increases (not including the 10mbit ethernet), especially for DDR2 users.
If I was interested in DDR3, then it is a different story. More potential for improvement.

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: KenAF
As far as I know, Abit IP35-E doesn't fully support Wolfdale at this point. I would suggest the DS3L.

abit will have a BIOS update for the IP35-E after Chinese New Year is over to improve E8x00 performance. I am having very good success with the DS3L and the E8400 tonight, just popped the E8500 in it.

Both are very good boards for the money, hard to go wrong with either one really. In regards to P45, it is a refinement over P35 in the same way P35 was over P965. At this point, the biggest difference in performance I know about is with the G45 version, its one reason why only ASUS has released G35 boards in mass. As far as general performance differences between P35 and P45 with current 800/1066FSB CPUs, do not expect much, the tuning has been for 1333/1600 series. What it will end up being is anyone's guess, but personally, I am thinking maybe 3% or so at best, Intel has reached the end of the trail with the FSB design, it still has some life but returns are diminishing quickly.

 

[KenAF]

If you have some memory lying around that requires 2.1v - 2.4v, you might want to try that with the DS3L after the rest of your tests are complete. On some forums, people report cold reboots and lost settings on the DS3L, DS3R, and other Gigabyte mainboards when using memory that requires >2.0v to boot.

If you see the same thing, you might want to note that as a warning -- i.e. that people should use 1.8-2.0v memory.

 

[woofersus]

I've been looking at a DS3L and already have purchased some corsair xms2 ddr2-800. Any idea what the voltage requirements are off the top of your head?

Also, sorry if this is too far off topic to be in good taste, but does anybody know if a scythe infinity will fit a DS3L?

 

[andrei3333]

the ram supported list on the gigabyte web site will help you determine if the ram will work with the board... and i dont think the >2.0V voltage is a problem

 

[Mondoman]

Originally posted by: woofersus
... have purchased some corsair xms2 ddr2-800. Any idea what the voltage requirements are off the top of your head?...

It varies according to the model number.

 

[woofersus]

*sigh* (stops being lazy and looks it up)