Why are 945P Conroe mobos cheaper and considered "low end"?!

[Dance123]

Hi,

How come that 945P Conroe mobos are considered "low end" when reading posts and reviews.

Is the performance of the "older" 945P chipset with for example an E6600/4MB Conroe perhaps not as good as with the 975x or 965 chipsets?!

Asus has some 945P mobos that are "Core 2 Duo ready", but what about there performance compared to the much more epensive 975/965 mobos.

I don't intend to overclock, however it's always possible that newer chipsets have some benifits over older ones that were being upgraded to support Conroe.. so how is that with the 945P performance versus 975x/965?!

There must be a reason 945P mobos are much cheaper but I can't find it in the specs which seem similar to 975/965, so anybody can tell me please?!

 

[anthrax]

The only big thing missing from the 945 is support of DDR2-6400 . Therefore, it can't take the fastest memory. However, rumors have it that the 945 w/ intergrated graphics is far superior to the G965...

 

[Peter]

The word is "integrated", and the main point in the 945 is, it consumes half as much power as the 965 and doesn't do /much/ worse in performance.

 

[Dance123]

So, aside from not supporting DDR2 800, will the performance of an E6600 be EQUALLY good with a 945P mobo compared to a 975/965?! I don't think DDR2 667 vs DDR2 800 will make that much of a difference, am I right?

But if so, then why are the 945P Conroe mobos consired "low end"? Are there any other reasons for this?!

It's so hard to find good, correct info about this!!

 

[Dance123]

Also, which PASSIVELY COOLED 945P mobos for a Core 2 Duo E6600 do you recommend?!

Is it correct that the Asus 945P mobos for Conroe aren't passively cooled.. can you fix that by installing one of those passive Zalman Northbridge coolers or how does that work to make a board completely passively cooled?!

Thanks for all good advice!!

 

[Peter]

Most vendors have pictures on their product pages - just look whether you see a fan or not

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

Originally posted by: Peter
The word is "integrated", and the main point in the 945 is, it consumes half as much power as the 965 and doesn't do /much/ worse in performance.

can u tell me more bout chipset & mainboard power consumption? what differences are we talkin about?

 

[Peter]

http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=33229

should give you an idea. 23 watts for the desktop 965 ... that makes passive cooling hardly feasible, even if you're being wildly optimistic about case temperatures.

 

[Dance123]

Originally posted by: Peter
Most vendors have pictures on their product pages - just look whether you see a fan or not

Isn't it so that most passively cooled mobo's like those from Asus actually have a heatpipe system.. maybe this is necessary with current chipsets like 945P and higher?..

Why would Asus otherwise have those heatpipes on certain recent mobos?!

 

[zephyrprime]

I have a asus p5ld2 and I don't recall it having heatpipes or fans. The pcb 2.0 version supports conroe. I've always kind of wondered what would happen if I plugged a conroe into it.

 

[arctic388]

anyone else comment on the 945 chipset ? i want a good stable board and the minimum is fine with me. no OC'ing and one cheap vid card is all i need/want right now.

please advise

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: arctic388
anyone else comment on the 945 chipset ? i want a good stable board and the minimum is fine with me. no OC'ing and one cheap vid card is all i need/want right now.

please advise

The main disadvantage of the 945chipset boards is the lack of good overclocking, which isn't a problem since you aren't going to OC. Also, you have to be careful about what revision of the board you get, in a lot of cases you need a newer revision of the board to actualy have core 2 duo support.

 

[nitromullet]

why are the 945P Conroe mobos consired "low end"?

Because that's just the way it is... The 945P is the low-end, the 975X the high, and 965P takes care of the middle. The main reason for the cost difference of the motherboards with different chipsets is the cost of the chipset and the feature set. If you compare your average 945P motherboard to an average 975X you will notice that the 975X board has a lot more features (and cost a lot more).

 

[larciel]

I just tested 945p and 965p chipset, both gigabyte made. everything else was same setup.

965 = booted windows at 500mhz . no MCH volt was raised. prime stable at 480mhz
945 = can't boot past 362mhz no MCH volt option available

Over 100mhz difference is quite large.

g'luck on your choice