extreme 4 vs 6 difference?

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dosmastr

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Jan 28, 2013
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photonboy
The "6" version also comes with a USB3 front tray but that's only really useful for those without front USB3 connectors on their case. There are other minor things that I don't consider important such as network teaming.

Here's a couple motherboards to consider:

1) $190 - Asus Maximus VI Hero
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-maximusvihero

2) $145 - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-z87g45gaming

3) $140 - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz87xud3h

The Hero is a little more expensive, but the SupremeFX audio solution is significantly better than any Realtek chip, so if a sound card is something you'd consider then I suggest doing this as you'll end up paying MORE for a separate card and...
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The "6" version also comes with a USB3 front tray but that's only really useful for those without front USB3 connectors on their case. There are other minor things that I don't consider important such as network teaming.

Here's a couple motherboards to consider:

1) $190 - Asus Maximus VI Hero
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-maximusvihero

2) $145 - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-z87g45gaming

3) $140 - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz87xud3h

The Hero is a little more expensive, but the SupremeFX audio solution is significantly better than any Realtek chip, so if a sound card is something you'd consider then I suggest doing this as you'll end up paying MORE for a separate card and wasting a PCIe slot.

If you don't have crappy speakers you'll hear a big difference. I tested with my M-Audio AV40 speakers for a while then during troubleshooting used a system with a new Realtek chip and for MOVIES and GAMING it was almost painful to my ears to hear the muffled noise etc. I was shocked at the difference.

All the motherboards, including the Asrock seem to be pretty good choices depending on what you want. I'm not normally a fan of MSI but the customer feedback for this board appears pretty good.
 
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The only big difference between the Extreme4 and Extreme6 is the number of phases in the power design and the number of SATA and USB ports. So if you feel you will need additional ports the Extreme6 is better. Don't worry about their number of power phases here which is important if you plan to overclock but after you get to 8 the number isn't as important and both boards have over 8.

I would recommend you go with Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, or another company though. ASrock has terrible customer service. I do not know how other companies are, but ASrock's is non-existent so if nothing else it can't be any worse. Also ASrock lies about their features. Most importantly to me is they advertise a "Digital" power design on all of their boards. A digital power design is better than analog and it is newer. I have two ASrock boards and after reading online I checked and both of them are Analog. So they use 100% pure false advertising. I've heard some boards are a hybrid design, but none of my boards were. I wouldn't buy from them anymore cause the poor customer support, so lying about their products just adds to it.

The boards that photonboy listed are all pretty good. I don't really see enough of an advantage in the ASUS board to recommend it over the MSI or Gigabyte boards for the price. I would personally go with the Gigabyte though. Also if you plan to use the onboard audio, here is this board:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128671

It is a little more expensive, but unlike most boards which just have a cheap DAC for audio, this one has an actual sound processor called a DSP onboard which will give audio quality equal to a pretty decent sound card.
 
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now we go a tad off topic. I have a sb x-fi because the onboard sound on my current mobo died a little bit ago... I didn't notice a difference but I have some pretty old "Compaq Premier sound" speakers so they may be the issue with clarity.

photonboy thanks for the mobo help
inuyasha...why is your coat blue and not red? lol I thought the high end Realtek devices, like the 1150 etc were dsp's they are not? The gigabyte is one with a name instead of a model number which is always nice heh (GB has driven me nuts with that!)
 
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For your audio then you are all set regardless. Improving the audio system has been the new thing in motherboards since it was the only part really hanging back. The Gygabyte board probably has onboard audio relatively similar to the X-Fi card so there is no reason to go for the more expensive Gigabyte. I would still go with the Gigabyte posted by the Photonboy though.

Lol just a picture I like, though might be because it is opposite. I never make sense. to add to confusion I am an introvert yet I am a Speech major in college, and I speak Japanese but my girlfriend is Chinese and those two countries are still angry over WWII. I never make sense 😛

As for the Realtek ALC1150, I don't really know. I am a bit confused by it honestly. It seems to be the highest end chipset from Realtek and several big companies are using it, yet Realtek's page on it says that it was designed for Windows Vista, making it sound way old, but still has higher noise levels than the Realtek ALC898. I can't help but feel maybe the ALC1150 was made first and was just too expensive to use in mass so cheaper chipsets were made to work up to it.

As for having a DSP, I couldn't find any information on that. I think that it has the ability to connect to a DSP because motherboards claiming to have them mention it, but I don't think it comes with one by default. I'm really not sure.

Haha yea they never do like to use names at Gigabyte. The only issue with getting the Gigabyte Sniper board though is that its main feature is the audio chipset. Unless you have a very cheap SB x-Fi card which lacks DSP or is low end with it I think you will be better to just use the sound card. When you rule out the audio chipset the Gigabyte Sniper board loses its only edge.
 
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anybody know exactly what lake tiny does? I know its power saving for ssd... but that's all I can find... not even numbers for how much power might be saved in general usage... let alone HOW it works.

I don't plan to use cfx or sli (psu is 80+ platinum, but low wattage) I keep looking up what the z chipsets get you over the H and thinking, yeah I'd still like that .... and then forget exactly why lol... back to google again. but I do remember lake tiny isn't on any of the other chipsets and I am running off a SSD. Its an office pc 98% of the time (so minimum power usage, ala haswell and my psu, is a goal) but that other 2% I am tired of all the slideshow gaming. (hoping that my old Pentium dual 2180 is bottlenecking my rad 7790... otherwise I'll be a bit sad til I can upgrade the gpu also)

so far the last 2 years I've been able to upgrade my gpu on black Friday and then sell the old gpu on ebay for 0-5 dollars less than the new one costs after rebates ... this puts the kibosch on any low power cfx setup I'd try. (why buy another card for 65-90, to get a 40% increase when I can break even and step up my single gpu to the tune of 15-25%?) ( Please note: percentages are unresearched estimates)

I remember a little bit ago some mobo's had tube amps for the DAC... niche product for sure, but shows at some point they tried using sound to differentiate.
 
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Sorry, been off ordering school books for this semester for the last 3 hours or I would of posted back sooner.

Anyways, I actually don't know what "lake tiny" is. Haven't heard of it before, but if its power saving for SSD I wouldn't even pay attention to it. I mean, I guess more power savings is good, but SSDs use ridiculously little power. The motherboard in a system usually only uses around 6 watts of power, and you would need at least 5 SSDs to even tie with that if they use a lot of power. If they are energy conservative you could well need 20 to equal the power usage of a motherboard. So this idea of an SSD power saving feature sounds extremely minor.

The only real advantage a "Z" chipset has is overclocking. Unless you plan to overclock, I would just go with a different system. Though I have seen some Intel CPUs undervolt really well, like my old i3-3225 which can run at -.50v. you might want a "Z" chipset for that.
If your ultimate goal is low power usage you might want to consider going with either an Ivy Bridge system, or a cheap Haswell CPU and upgrade when the next Intel CPUs come out. Ivy Bridge uses less power than Haswell, but what comes after Haswell should use much less than either.

As for occasional gaming, I wouldn't be too surprised if that Pentium was giving you some bottleneck. The 7790 is a pretty good card and while you won't max every game, you should play at 1080p with average settings easily. You might consider overclocking it a little though, since AMD usually overclocks really easily, and really well. Took 10 minutes to overclock my 7850's.

I personally wouldn't advise crossfire anymore to people. I have two 7850's in my PC right now and I have been really disappointed with the results. The main reason I got it was for Total War: Shogun II and it lowered performance. I've seen a little boost in games like Bioshock Infinity, but I didn't really need a boost in Bioshock Infinity. I was maxing it out already, and I would rather use less power and kill the world a little less and get 40-50FPS than get a solid 60FPS. I think if you have been doing that well slowly trading up you should continue.

I know now some have amps for the DAC, but idr it happening before. Then again I missed pretty much everything which came between the end of DDR RAM and the end of 2011 so I probably missed it. Its a bit niche but for some one added feature will win them over.

For that ASrock board, I still would advise against them because their customer support is terrible. If it dies, I would be amazed if they full fill the warranty. The board looks pretty good and well rounded with features, but again if it dies you are out of luck probably. And where they advertise "Digi PWM". They lied about that before, and are probably still lying about it.

For RAM don't worry about the speed, just let it be at 1.5v. Unless you use integrated graphics you will see very very little difference in performance between RAM speeds with good timings.
 
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