Which motherboard for Core 2 Duo Crossfire?

[Josh7289]

I'm putting together a PC for a friend who just received a free X1900 XT, and he wants to make it a pretty good computer around that card, mostly for video editing. I'm going with a dual-core processor because of that, and he also wants it to be compatible with Crossfire. So, which Core 2 Duo motherboards are best for Crossfire (which support it at all?)? How about AMD? Actually, which would be the better processor for him, a Core 2 Duo or an Athlon X2?

 

[moosey]

I'd go with the Intel platform. For Crossfire nvidia chipsets are out. Gotta look to Intel or RD600.

975 v. 965 chipset w/ crossfire
From http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2882&p=14
QUOTE:
"We utilized the final 6.10 driver set for testing. We also tested with the recently released 6.11 driver set but did not note any significant differences in performance or compatibility on our two boards today. AMD/ATI has made significant improvements in the performance of CrossFire on the P965 chipset but the 975X still performs better overall across a wide variety of games. In fact, in Company of Heroes the P965 suffers a performance impact of up to 50% when compared to the 975X chipset. We are still testing other games but at this time we still recommend the 975X chipset for the best CrossFire performance and compatibility across a wide range of titles."

 

[Josh7289]

OK then, how about between the MSI 975X Platinum V.2 and the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe? Which of these has the least problems? Which one handles IDE devices better?

 

[Elfear]

MSI works great as long as you don't plan on an uber oc. I've heard the P5W DH is better for ocing. Both still have little quirks to work out.

 

[Josh7289]

Anything better than either of those, then? I doubt he'll be OC'ing, but IDE is important.

 

[Elfear]

If he's not looking for world records the MSI board actually works quite well. It even oces pretty well (mine does 440MHz stable) but it starts acting up once you raise the fsb over ~330MHz.

 

[moosey]

how about intel BadAxe2 ??

 

[Whirlwind]

My son has that ASUS P5W DH Deluxe, we are going to be going X1900 cross fire sometime in 07, sounds like that board and crossfire is a pretty nice set up.

 

[trOver]

i have the asus p5w-dh deluxe. works grrreeat for me. booted first time. i updated the bios to the newest (very easy to do i might add) and just looking around the bios there are LOTS of overclock features. (fsb to 550mhz!!)

 

[Skott]

As things stand with current BIOSes I'd lean more towards the P5W DH. But if there is no OCing to be involved then I'd say get the cheapest of the two you can find at the time of purchase. But if OCing will be involved I'd suggest the P5W DH over the MSI. Its always been my opinion most mobo problems arise when OCing is involved although not all problems are limited to OCing.


Edit: The BadAxe2 does indeed OC out of the box higher than the P5W DH now (making it the better OCer) but it has two drawbacks. One is if there is a failed OC attempt you have to go to the mobo and use jumpers to clear it. The P5w DH just boots back to the default mobo settings. The second drawback of the BA2 is that the hd light stays on when using JMicron or whatever its called. More of a annoyance than anything else.

 

[moosey]

Originally posted by: Skott
Edit: The BadAxe2 does indeed OC out of the box higher than the P5W DH now (making it the better OCer) but it has two drawbacks. One is if there is a failed OC attempt you have to go to the mobo and use jumpers to clear it. The P5w DH just boots back to the default mobo settings. The second drawback of the BA2 is that the hd light stays on when using JMicron or whatever its called. More of a annoyance than anything else.

The HDD LED is supposed to be taken care of next BIOS revision.

 

[Heidfirst]

Also worth looking at the DFI Infinity 975X & the abit AW9D series.