X38 or P35 for next year
 

X38 boards are currently very expensive c/w P35 boards.

Perhaps the new 45nm chips will run cooler and OC better with the X38 chipset.
While the PCIE1 will bottleneck the next wave of cards.

Ive read reviews of both chipsets and these are the only reasons I can think of that justify buying the X38.

Currently the P35 boards offer excellent performance with current CPUS and memory for a lot less eg. the DFI blood Iron or some of the P35 Gigabyte/ ASUS offerings.

So is it worth paying for X38 with the new 45nm CPUS and GPUs when using DDR2?

I won't bother with p35 or x38 as I'm interested more in the next board that supports SLI or is nvidia based.

P35 is much better than X38 and the next wave of cards will not saturate the PCI-E 1.0 slots either. If anything, wait for the X48 boards and go to DDR3 because that is the future. As for Nvidia boards, the 780i is nothing but a refresh of the terrible 680i chipset with PCI-E 2.0 added. Not worth waiting for.

I know p35 > x38 and 780i is rehashed 680i but if you want to take advantage of the pci-e 2.0 then you'll need the 780i tho it may not take advantage of that.

X48? I've not seen anything suggesting that it's going to be much more than a highly-binned X38, perhaps with a few minor bells and whistles added. The price premium will probably be even worse than with X38. And DDR3 will probably still be some time coming down to a remotely reasonable price.

P35 is plenty for the vast majority of users. The main advantage of X38 will be multiple PCI-E x16 slots, but (quite likely) only for Crossfire. Most of the X38 boards coming out seem to have more robust power systems than the P35 boards, but that's only going to be an issue if you're looking for some serious overclocking.

oh
 

So theres a lot more choice for next year.

Very impressed with the P35 so far and I know its early days for the X38.

Personally I dont care for SLI/crossfire and just want to keep buying the strongest single-card possible.

I think the DFI Blood Iron is the only single PCIE board Ive seen that really packs a punch. Otherwise SLI boards seem to be the best over-clocking choice even if you don't go SLI.

P35 with a lovely Q9450 + a GPU upgrade Q42008 could be the way to go if not going for SLI or DDR3.

Although Ill be kicking myself if DDR3 and the new chipsets crash in price in 2008 and the new 45nm cpus scream in the X38 and later chipsets.

I don't care much for SLI either but the 680i boards are still some of the top overclockers and performing boards around.

yes
 

I better get my facts straight before ruling the 680i out.

680i has had a lot of time to mature and I know my brothers striker extreme is finally starting to behave itself with the quad now.

Id love to know if the NVIDIA cards work/oc better on the 680i c.w. P35.

What does highly binned mean?:help:

I understand now that we have different quality/levels of CPUs to minimize costs by being able to use "lesser" cpus for other product lines, but I don't understand highly binned.

Thanks!

Slightly out of context, but the best way to visualize it is with memory......

When PC2 6400 first came out, many folks were getting PC2 8500 speeds out of them by overclocking.... Memory makers then started "binning" their memory sticks better and labeled the higher grade ones as PC2 8500.

All it really means is that a manufacturer is getting better at finding the top end for a particular piece of kit, thus is able to ask a premium price for it.