Which motherboard for my i7?

[chameleon23]

Been looking at motherboards, getting the...

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail

Always been getting ASUS brand but now EVGA has come into the market. Can anyone comment or should I just stick with the...

ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

been comparing that to these two EVGA boards:

EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - Retail

EVGA E758-TR 3-Way SLI (x16/x16/x8) LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

P.S. - I will not be using SLI, just triple channel memory

Thanks!

 

[inhuman]

I came here intending to make an almost identical thread, and since you have made this one, I'll just tag along:

I'm building a new system. I've already bought a i7 920 of D0 stepping. Main use of the system will be gaming, video playback and digital imaging &3D modelling/animation software.

About the mainboard I want, all I know and can say is this:
- sub $300 range
- At least 1 IDE port
- At least 2 PCI ports (for my TV card and PCI SB X-FI ExtremeGamer, therefore I couldn't care less about onboard audio - unless current generation of onboard audio easilty outdo my card, LOL)
- Support for both SLI & CrossFire (at x16/x16) >>this means that the second GPU would work at full capacity as well, right?
- 3+ Way SLI / CrossFire not needed (I just *might* go regular SLI or CrossFire at some point, but I'm positive that I won't a threesome of GPUs, or more)
- At least 1 external SATA port
- Since all of the current-crop of mobos come with more USB and SATA ports than I use atm, I have no preference over the specific numbers

Notes:
- I have absolutely no idea regarding memory specifications, so no preference in that area.
- I have absolutely no idea what various PCI-2x/4x/8x etc. are for and why I might need them, so no preference in that area.

Partly guided by numerous site reviews, customer reviews and ratings, here's what I've concluded to be a reasonable selection which meet all of my criteria:

EVGA E758-A1 ~$300
Maximum Memory Supported: 12GB >how bad is this? how soon would 12+ GB of RAM be a necessity?

EVGA E758-TR ~$270

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 ~$300

ASUS P6T EXTREME(?) ~$250

ASUS P6T ~$180

INTEL DX58S0 ~$240

Then there are also the Gigabyte mobos for which I find excellent references, but enigmatically, they haven't added a single eSATA port on either. I also don't know if they are x16/x16:

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R ~$210

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P ~$260

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 ~$300

I'm having a real difficult time discerning the major differences between all these (other than the impact of 2-way vs. 3-way SLI/CrossFire) and why I should go for one over the other.

Notes:

I'm still on an old Pentium 4 3.4 XE (s478), with good old APG video socket and several regular PCI sockets, running 4 sticks of 400mhz DDR2 ram. The newest pieces of technology in my board are probably the SATA ports. So, I'm not familiar with any of the PCIe/x and honestly, and I find the naming conventions confusing, what with 16x/8x/4x, or the difference between e/x, if any.

I've bought this i7 920 D0 stepping, partly because it was a one-time only killer deal and if ever feel like getting one of the higher 1366 i7s later, I can easily sell it where I live for the price I bought it at. I read that Intel will introduce a new socket, 11something later, which will include the future i7s as well and replace the 1366 i7s, but I just decided that I couldn't wait much longer for a new system.

Main resource-heavy use of the new system will be gaming, video playback and light use of various digital imaging and 3D modelling/animating software. Bottomline is that I'd like to build an as long lasting system as my current one (I've only recently started experiencing trouble with playback of newer bluray videos on my current system, and likewise with games. Even Crysis runs perfectly playable on medium settings). 920 might not have been the best choice for that atm, but if and when I hit a significant CPU bottleneck, I bet there will be lots of cheap dirt 965 XEs floating around (like it happened with P4 XEs). At least I hope.


edit: I've read the sticky on PCI - Express, so I got some of the basics, but there seems to be a lot more into it than simple generation differences so what I should look for in a mobo in that regard is still not clear to me. Just saying.

 

[inhuman]

Silly reply page, and there's no delete button...

 

[inhuman]

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[inhuman]

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[jaggerwild]

I would suggest unless your gonna be super cooling the build to not use the EVGA board as they will not yeild higher than normal over clocks. I hear there mini or micro is surpassing the Classified in the OC ing.
Gigabyte makes some great boards(IMHO) and they have treated me great, they are my next board. I do not know ASUS except when I had a socket 939 and they took great care of me when the board had issues.
Good luck keep us posted!

 

[chameleon23]

So maybe go for the ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ?

What does the O.C. standard on the memory mean? Doesn't 1600 just come 1600, there aren't two distinctions of 1600 and 1600 O.C. are there?

Anyone have anything else good or bad to say about this board? I think this is the one I'm going to choose, but I'm still open to ideas.

Thanks.

 

[inhuman]

Quick question: DDR3 1600Mhz 6GB 3x2GB from OCZ (OCZ3G1600LV6GK; that's "gold" plated series) or Kingston (KHX12800D3LLK3/6GX; HyperX ) and why?? Price is the same, specifications are the same. Lifetime warranty on both.

Originally posted by: chameleon23
So maybe go for the ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ?

It's one of the top 5 user-rated boards at NewEgg and it's also one of the persisting favourite of several X58 board roundups, so I'm also leaning towards it atm. However, Asus has released so many variations of P6T, I'd like to know if either offer any significant advantage over previous iterations. It's all confusing.

What does the O.C. standard on the memory mean? Doesn't 1600 just come 1600, there aren't two distinctions of 1600 and 1600 O.C. are there?

Thanks.

I'd like to learn the answers to that as well.

 

[chameleon23]

Please, can anyone help out? Planning to order in the next 2 days.

 

[JAG87]

Personally I'd get an evga, for the simple reason that their support is the best in the business. If you need something, you have a neat organized website that is quickly accessible.

I stopped buying Asus once I realized they don't give a shit about people in other continents not being able to download jack shit from their super slow ass website.

Personally I would get the X58 LE, as there seems to be no real benefit to the original X58. I also like the layout of the slots much more on the LE.

Regarding the RAM, Asus likes to put O.C. because DDR3-1600 is not a DDR3 standard. Core i7 doesn't even officially support DDR3-1600, as a matter of fact you have to overclock the uncore to 3200 MHZ in order to run DDR3-1600.

As far as pci-e is concerned, you don't really need to be worried unless you are planning a multi-gpu configuration. X58 has 36 lanes which are sufficient for (2) pci-e 16x. If you use more than (2) pci-e 16x cards then you need to worry about it.

 

[chameleon23]

Great thank you for the reply. Now which EVGA board would you recommend. I really am not comfortable spending close to $300 dollars for a board, but I have accepted the fact that I need to pay over $200, so you have my approximate range I think of 200-260.

I was looking at the - EVGA E758-TR 3-Way SLI (x16/x16/x8) LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - but I don't see that much of a difference between that one and the - EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - other than the amount of component slots. Is it a higher quality board?

Please recommend an EVGA board, thank you.

 

[JAG87]

The E758 is a higher quality board technically. It has a 10 phase VRM versus a 6 phase on the E757. Results haven't showed the E758 to overclock any better however.

It also has a richer I/O selection at the back. If things like ESATA, Firewire, and Dual Ethernet are important to you, then consider the E758.

Me personally, I wouldn't buy it. They layout is bad compared to the E757, and it has active cooling on the chipset which almost for sure is noisy since the fan is small.

I mean in all truth I wouldn't buy the LE either, that's why I own a Classified. For a budget build however, I would definitely pick the E757 over the E758.

If I had to pick another board apart from the Classified it would be the DFI X58-T3eH8, but that board isn't for everyone, starting with the complete absence of audio, down to the incredibly cryptic bios. I doubt you can deal with that, otherwise you wouldn't be asking questions on a forum

 

[chameleon23]

Well the thing is I'm not going for an overly budget build, I want something better than average. I am not too interested in ESATA, firewire or Dual Ethernet, but I will most likely use ESATA sometime in the future for an external drive.

From you description you really aren't satisfied with the EVGA boards. I have always been a buyer of ASUS, but I do agree that their website is horrible. I like the layout of the E757 as well, but it doesn't seem a popular buy on newegg and I'm trying to figure out why.

Either way, what memory speed to you suggest buying? You said the i7 isn't good at supporting DDR3-1600 but you run it yourself?

 

[JAG87]

I'm not satisfied because I am picky, but that doesn't mean it don't satisfy your needs. The E757 might not be a popular buy because it was released very recently.

I never said DDR3-1600 wasn't good on i7. It's just not officially supported, but you can run it. I wouldn't go above DDR3-1600, it puts too much stress on the memory controller and requires too much VTT.

 

[chameleon23]

Ok great so I will go with these two:

EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - Retail

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8D - Retail

unless you have a better RAM recommendation

Also if I'm not using RAID there is no need to go for the RE3 HD right? Just stick with the Caviar Black?

 

[GEOrifle]

I'm also waiting for X58 boards to come little lower in price, got i7 920 D0.
But i'm loocking for ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 -$290 is too much for it.
I don't like EVGA even some of their boards got LIFETIME warranty but they are so AGLY and EVGA got really bad return-replace servise(gotta pay for it $) so i decided stick with ASUS P6T Deluxe V2, they going to release one more EXTREME series and hoping it will push prices on old stuff down.

 

[chameleon23]

Yea I've been buying ASUS my whole life and never had a bad board; wondering if switching now is the best option but then again I'm comparing these two boards in the end

ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - Retail

What do you think GEOrifle?

 

[ibauer74]

Hi, all. I'm also going to replace my old machine with a new one based on i7-920 CPU and nVidia GeForce GTX 275 GPU. I'm also considering ASUS P6T motherboard as an option. There is also another mobo named P6T SE, but I cannot seem to find out the differences between the two. Can anyone shed some light on this, please?

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Originally posted by: ibauer74
Hi, all. I'm also going to replace my old machine with a new one based on i7-920 CPU and nVidia GeForce GTX 275 GPU. I'm also considering ASUS P6T motherboard as an option. There is also another mobo named P6T SE, but I cannot seem to find out the differences between the two. Can anyone shed some light on this, please?

SE doesn't have SLI.

 

[chameleon23]

Difficult for me to see the difference two, let me list the prices:

ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - $250
ASUS P6T SE LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - $209

Newegg actually uses the same picture for both boards so there has to be something different internally about them cause spec-wise they appear the same. To me SE stands for second edition so why is it so much cheaper?

I'm still consider the EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard but the lack of a firewire and eSATA port and only 1 LAN port bugs me, but the one EVGA board higher up than this one has an onboard fan which just adds to unnecessary noise to my PC.

Any opinions on those boards or can someone clarify the ASUS differences?

Thanks.

 

[ibauer74]

Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem
SE doesn't have SLI.

Thanks, I must have missed this one while comparing the specs. I guess I don't need SLI if I plan to use only one GPU, so it looks like it is safe to go with P6T SE.

I've got one more question regarding the memory modules and their layout. This mobo has triple channel, 6 memory slots. I plan to have 8 GB RAM in total. What is the recommended layout of memory modules in order to achieve optimal performance? Is it possible to configure the memory layout to fill only 2 or 4 memory slots?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ibauer74]

Hmm, I just realized that my question about memory really doesn't belong here, so I apologize. Reposting my question to Memory and Storage forum.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Originally posted by: ibauer74

Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem
SE doesn't have SLI.

Thanks, I must have missed this one while comparing the specs. I guess I don't need SLI if I plan to use only one GPU, so it looks like it is safe to go with P6T SE.

I've got one more question regarding the memory modules and their layout. This mobo has triple channel, 6 memory slots. I plan to have 8 GB RAM in total. What is the recommended layout of memory modules in order to achieve optimal performance? Is it possible to configure the memory layout to fill only 2 or 4 memory slots?

Thanks in advance.

You'll be running in dual channel mode instead of triple which isn't ideal.

 

[ibauer74]

Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem
You'll be running in dual channel mode instead of triple which isn't ideal.

Thanks, understood. So the memory modules have to be installed in groups of three, right? That makes only two options for me: Either use six 2 GB modules or three 4GB modules which totals for 12 GB.

Thank you!

 

[gbeirn]

You can use 8GB in triple channel with the caveat that the first 6GB would run in triple channel and the last 2GB would drop to a slower speed. If you are buying new RAM for this why not just stick to 6GB or go all out and get 12GB - it isn't terribly expensive compared to the rest of the system.