Motherboard selection.

[miggs78]

Asus P5Q-E or Gigabyte EP45 DS3R. Going to use it for overclocking, benchmarking, games like COD4, also RAID so I will need up to 4 SATA ports at least.

Which one would you go for. Oh and is it worth paying an extra $100 or so for a Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4, since crossfire performance will be much better on an X48 than a P45.

Thanks

[yycraven]

I would say go with the Asus P5Q-E its a great board.

[Infiniti]

I just got the P5Q-E and hooked it up to my computer. Works great! Except there isn't a beep for the POST because there isn't a speaker.. I haven't tried overclocking yet, but I'll let you know how it goes once I get my OS running.

[werty316]

If I had to choose I would go for the Asus since I've never owned a Gigabyte board and Asus never let me down thus far.

[enaberif]

Biostar I45 :)
NCIX.com - Buy Biostar Tpower I45 ATX LGA775 P45 DDR2OC 2PCI-E 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN CrossFireX Motherboard - TPower I45 In Canada.

Setting records all over the place.

Gigabyte boards and Asus boards have crappy sata port placement that drives me BATTY!

[Dashock]

yea i bought the Asus P5Q-E if you can wait a bit longer im gonna overclock it with my E3110 and i only use 2 hard drives might get a third but i see 4 verrry useable ports on this board anyways for me it seems fine but only time will tell.

[3.0charlie]

Gigabytes all the way; the X48-DS4 is a great board, if you can afford it. But the I45 that enaberif proposed is very interesting too and worth taking a look at.

[Boldeagle]

Originally Posted by enaberif

Biostar I45 :)
NCIX.com - Buy Biostar Tpower I45 ATX LGA775 P45 DDR2OC 2PCI-E 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN CrossFireX Motherboard - TPower I45 In Canada.

Setting records all over the place.

Gigabyte boards and Asus boards have crappy sata port placement that drives me BATTY!

I second the Biostar, have a look here;

BIOSTAR

Personally with the 4870x2 having more possible power than the vast majority of the market can benefit from, you won't really need the x16/x16 xfire off 2 cards unless you wanna have bragging rights on cyper-penis length. Also it wont be long before a GTX280x2 is out offering even more power for single slot systems and by the time there is sufficient technology (software and hardware) available to actually utilise that amount of power the new series will have arrived. The p45 are reaching higher FSB and will yield more actual "real world" performance gain through higher CPU clocks than having x16/x16, imho.

[miggs78]

Originally Posted by enaberif

Biostar I45 :)
NCIX.com - Buy Biostar Tpower I45 ATX LGA775 P45 DDR2OC 2PCI-E 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN CrossFireX Motherboard - TPower I45 In Canada.

Setting records all over the place.

Gigabyte boards and Asus boards have crappy sata port placement that drives me BATTY!

I will have a look at that board, but to let you know enaberif, if you look at the Asus P5Q-E (not the Pro) board carefully, all the ports are lined up on the edge of the board, there is nothing crappy in that.!!!!

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by miggs78

I will have a look at that board, but to let you know enaberif, if you look at the Asus P5Q-E (not the Pro) board carefully, all the ports are lined up on the edge of the board, there is nothing crappy in that.!!!!

On the edge yes. But not the proper way I like. Look at the Biostar board and see how they do the sata ports; thats the right way.

Cables run a lot easier and cards work a lot better.