Question for Rahja the Thief or Quaker

http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16813128059

Is this a good motherboard?
One of the reveiws says the following:
"Great performance! Running an E6550 at 2.8GHz stable with stock cooling & no voltage increase. Well laid out & easy to work with. P35 chipset guaranteed to work with Penryn dual & quad cores (Sorry 680i guys)."

So just wondering if this true should I wait for the Processor(Penryn)?
Or is it not what I'm looking for.

If you could give suggestions that would be helpful...TY
Oh and I'm not gonna run SLI or Raid, or have a use for firewire....
I do have 8880GTX not worried about SLI

in short..yes it's a good mobo. (if it's what YOU want)

I'm running a p35c-ds3r.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128050

no complaints..no BSODS...been on for 38 days.

lol, but don't take my word for it...wait for the 2 specific people you named.

TY for the reply flubber.
I value everyones opinion, but see the 2 I've mentioned say alot
about computers and parts.

It's really hard to decide on parts, this is my first build and I hope to do more
in the future, so any suggestion, or any advice is greatly appreciated.

I'm just trying to get things done right the first time, so I don't make any mistakes that might throw me off trying to build my own.

Again, TY for the suggestion and if ya have anymore please feel free to point them my way...

Hello!

I am surprised that Rahja or Quaker have not responded as of yet. Here are a bunch of comments and questions.

1. Are you just running GW? If so, it is like you are beating a kitten with a baseball bat! I don't see the hype behind the Penryn... especially since most games these days don't hog that kind of CPU Usage.
2. This board supports the Penryn, so why would you have to wait for it if you bought it?
3. The chipset sucks on this board. I would still opt out for an ASUS board with a better chipset. You could get a good alternative board with a better chipset and RAID and SLI options (even if you don't want it at the moment).
4. I honestly believe you will get better performance going with a RAID and SLI setup as opposed to waiting for the Penryn, which as I stated earlier, is only going to give you increased CPU performance... and you will still be limited by HD IOs... which could be increased with a striped RAID or at least a dynamic volume setup with two drives (bandaid method).

Lastly, go with another board that will be in the same price range and give you more options. I avoide Intel chipsets like the plague on gaming rigs. My experience is you always get subpar performance, even if they have improved on their chipset end.

Well I'm looking at upgradeability, basically.
Ive got about $1000.00 to work with, not including the Operating system, and the video card, which I already have.

I don't want the best processor, but I do want the option to play other games besides GW.

Thats what the idea is....

In working with a $1000 budget... I would take a serious look at ibuypower. They have good configurable rigs that support SLI and whatnot. You can just cheap out were you already have the parts. Getting that board is short changing yourself with other games, but it is extremely overboard for just GW. That is why my reply was the way it was. I am always amazed at the systems some people will pour money into, just to play GW! lol

Also, deals like this are the reason why I caution people not to pay a $100 dollars for a motherboard.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...=P450-9102%20L
Go with this and then add more memory to it... or a coulple drives and definitely a new processor. This is one of the better deals I have seen around recently. Gets a go ahead from me to buy it.

Personally, I'd get Penryn once the prices settle down after the launch. Conroes will probably be cheaper, but not by that much. Since you aren't going SLI, stick with the P35 chipset. Some Nvidia 680i boards have problems with the new processors, so I wouldn't buy one of those if you want upgradeability. There are Intel X38 and Nvidia 780i motherboards, but those are quite expensive compared to the board you listed.

Also, I wouldn't go RAID. I recently set up RAID 0 just for fun and wasn't really impressed. Benchmarks showed an increase in speed (65mb/s -> 110mb/s), but I can't tell a difference. Games did not load any faster, and neither did Windows.

lol... your read times look like they dropped in half! I notice a very large difference in gameplay with a RAID 0. I try my best to avoid just RAID 0 because of the likelihood that a drive will fail and then I am screwed. RAID 0+1 is a good option if you have the money, however, you should -image whenever an update comes... you will save yourself some headaches when you start writing to four drives.

You always get performance speed with gaming rigs on a stripped set. You always get fragged drives on any RAID. In either case, No on the motherboard. That link I sent you should be more than fine for you. You will have to upgrade the processor because that one sucks.

This is the new 780i.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188024


The manufacturer actually stated that 680i mobo would run the Dual Core
45nm Wolfdales when they became availiable.
Which in my case is what i was looking for, dont need quad core at all.
So (any or just the EVGA)? 680i mobo should handle the new Processor if and when I decide to upgrade.
So this is just more research in a long drawn out plan to build which, I plan on doing before buying any parts.
Very picky I am....

Comment from customer:

Pros: this board is a revamp of the 680i... the only difference is the northbridge and sli capacity... if you are looking for penryn support, look at the 790i which will be out shortly...

Cons: rumors are that the 780i will work with 45nm dual core but not quads... nothing is set in stone yet...

Other Thoughts: the 790i will support penryn quads...
Manufacturer Response:To clear things up the EVGA 780i motherboard does support the full 45nm 1333FSB Intel CPU line up; dual (wolfdale) and quad (yorkfield). The EVGA 680i supports the 45nm 1333FSB dual cores (wolfdales).

Sorry, I'm not on here every day

But let me say this. In the past I have had good success with Gigabyte motherboards, but the distributer I used to deal with stopped supplying them because they had "reliability problems" - they had more warranty returns. But that's probably only a matter of degree, and that was then, this is now.

Overall, the motherboards that I've liked the best were AOpen and Asus. AOpen boards always worked well and had good build quality, and I liked their documentation and extras. ASUS are always good, but you pay for the name.

I've also had good results with DFI and Intel, and have used some Sapphire boards as well. I'm not familiar with EVGA boards at all, and don't generally like ECS ones.

Generally, if your not interested in SLI or over-clocking, you just need a basic motherboard. However, depending upon how much equipment you intend to carry over from your present rig, you should pay attention to how many IDE ports it has. IDE (or PATA) is rapidly giving way to SATA, whether you use RAID or not. The Gigabyte board you first mentioned only lists 1 IDE port (for 2 IDE devices) and appears to have (perhaps) a floppy connector (although floppies are not needed much anymore). The EVGA board doesn't specify (in the Newegg listing) any IDE ports, but appears to have one connector that could be either IDE or Floppy.
My current rig actually has no IDE hard drives and just one IDE DVDROM drive. I use an SATA boot drive and an SATA DVD burner (which took a bit of fiddling to get going) and an SATA RAID1.

EDIT: looking at the EVGA one on their website, it would appear to have both a floppy and an IDE connector (1), although they don't mention either one.

Personally, also, I'd go for Penryn compatibility (and processor).

Thanks Quaker for your input.
Will take into consideration.
Have yet to make a solid decision, on anything, but the power supply and case.
So hopefully when taxes come around, Ill have some more options.

Thanks for the reply...

I've had minimal success with MSI, EVGA, Biostar, PC Chips, Soyo, and ECS boards in general. I have had a ton of success with ASUS, DFI, Abit, and XFX boards. I stay away from Intel, unless I am building a server. Even then, I normally pick up only Tyan boards.
At this stage in the game, if you are still running IDE drives, and they are not enclosed in an external carriage connected through USB, your hardware is outdated and upgrading should include upgrading the drives also. The general transfer speeds of SATA make it a no-brainer. I stick with ASUS because their customer support rocks. Their hardware is reliable and filled with extras to help monitor the stability of the board. ASUS boards are easy to tweak and have loads of documentation to help you out. Also, when I run into problems with configuring a tricky RAID config or just overclocking, ASUS has numerous forums that explain "how to".
Anyway, I agree with the IDE issue. My motherboard also has only one slot, which I run two LS DVD Burners off of it. I don't have a floppy connection, and just run a usb floppy. With the amount of money you are willing to pour into the system, take a little time and search around before you jump into an inferior gaming rig. My system cost a little under $1,500 to build (just hardware), however, because I planned it out, I won't need to upgrade for another year or so.

At this point, SATA is limited by the speed of the hard drive itself. There is not generally a noticeable difference in performance between a recent PATA (IDE) drive and an SATA one. So there's no need to trash your IDE drives and get SATA unless you intend to get a new drive anyway.

I definitely disagree... please read this article... especially concerning bandswidth, which we both know concerns the amount of data that can move between two places... (speed or throughput... you choose which word you would like to use)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...22/ai_98977132

Yes, we all know that SATA interface's throughput is better than PATA (IDE) - in theory. But there are 2 things to consider:

1. Even the fastest of today's hard drives do not come up to the possible throughput of the SATA interface.

2. A new-ish IDE hard drive is almost as fast as today's SATA hard drives. And, I'm only talking about the hard drive itself - not the interface.

Now, I'm not saying that some old 1.2Gig hard drive is as fast as an SATA. But what I am saying is that, if you have a modern 80Gig or larger hard drive connected to an ATA/133 interface, you won't get enough (if any) of an increase in performance by switching to an SATA hard drive to worry about it. In the future, when SATA hard drives get faster, yes, but not now.

I wasn't talking about rpm, and I definitely appreciate your comments. I was talking about data speed. Because of the increased bandswidth, you are able to push a lot more data across at a faster rate. ATA cables are degraded in comparison to SATA. New IDE drives do not compare in the least bit to the equivalent SATA.
I will summarize why I always choose SATA over ATA

* ATA is limited to 133MB/second transfer limits due to data loss and electromagnetic interfenence.
* SATA is typically around 150MB/second to 300MB/second
* SATA's smaller cables increases the internal airflow of a system, making the system cooler and easier to work within
* ATA rely on a 5v 4 pin Molex connector, which causes us to constantly buy larger power supplies (you need voltage regulators if you are plugging anything in that is different than 5V). While, SATA utilizes LVDS (low voltage differential signaling) which includes support for 3.3V, 5.0V, and 12V power supply connections. Manufacturers can create harddrives that can decrease the load on your rails and the temp in your system.
* SATA supports hotswapping and ATA does not.
* SATA hard drives operate cooler and on higher bandswidths which equates to faster data transfer.
* SATA have roughly a 5% benchmarking boost over ATA... and you know that if you benchmark your systems the way I do.
* Many manufacturers are phasing out IDE intergrated connectors on their boards because of it's limitations.

I hope that helps a bit, and I honestly don't mean to be a pain. I am a geek, and as a geek, I share.

I pick SATA over IDE for one simple reason. The bus mastering is superior on SATA, meaning you will use less processor time for drive activity. Granted, on a modern system (IE, running at more than 1 GHz) I've never seen any drive cause more than 3% CPU usage. I also seem to have less locking with SATA drives. Locking is when your system is using a file system and won't accept any input until that task is done. It may have something to do with the larger caches on my newer SATA drives, but that's just my experience.

Technically speaking, PATA does support hot swapping. It's in the specifications, and server-level drives and controllers have been doing it for years. The limitation is, oddly enough, the connector itself. If you look at a SATA connector, there are long leads and short leads. The long ones are grounds, meant to plug in before the others to prevent shorting. PATA connectors don't have that, which is why they have to use those special drive sleds. Also, many consumer-level IDE controllers don't support hot swapping.

To the op: You could have just pm'ed those members.

On the SATA vs. IDE issue.
SATA is so much better. I have noticed a change when transferring files on my SATA vs my old IDE.

On the motherboard issue:
Make sure all your components are compatible and read reviews. I like Asus myself, but as long as the reviews are solid you shouldn't have trouble. See, reviews from people who have tried the motherboard are a lot more important than advice from someone like me who hasn't used that same exact motherboard.

When was the last time you've seen hot-swappable ATA drives in a production environment? I have never seen hot-swappable ATA drives in a production environment. SCSI, yes... that is the only hot-swappable drives I've seen out in production (Excluding SATA). ATA is limited and I would fear a hot-swappable drive, even in a perfect fitting and functionaly sled.

SATA = quieter, cooler, and faster