Help!! motherboard for i7 2600K

[lilblood904]

having a hard time finding a MB. i need a MB that give me the following options i need for my build. ( top of the line )

1) hyper threading. ( + OC to 4.5+GHZ with Liquid cooling. )
2) 2 x PCI Slots for duel GTX-580 @ 16x 16x. ( 16x 8x only if some 1 can explain whats the diff? and how much GPU preformance im loosing ) ( might b overclocking )
3) UP to 32GB Memory ( 2x8GB for now +2x8GB in the feature ) ( might B over clocking this to )
4) Sata 3 for SSD (120 GB SSD in sata 3 for OS + few Programs )
5) Sata 3 Raid 0 for 2x 1TB HD's

hope 2600k MB can handle sumting like this or i might have 2 go for x79 ;(. oh and idk id need like 3x sata 3 Ports to do 1x SSD and 2x HDs in Raid 0 right? )

 

[Raiddinn]

Others can assist you with finding a board, but I wanted to address #2.

There is little to no difference most of the time between x16/x16 and x8/x8. The bandwidth of this is very rarely the bottleneck in a system.

In fact, the x8/x8 can often be faster than the x16/x16 because the data doesn't have to be routed through a NF200 chip.

Asus is making boards now with 1 slot of 8 and 2 slots of 16 and suggesting people go with 16/8 (forces x8/x8) instead of 16/16 because it avoids going through the NF200.

You would start to notice a serious difference only in extreme conditions, like if you were doing eyefinity with 3x 30 inch monitors on ultra settings.

An analysis I read showed the difference to be like +/- 1% or less most of the time (80 more or less frames out of 8000, for instance) difference between the two and the two often switched which was ahead and which was behind depending on the game being used for benchmarking.

IIRC, shader heavy games (iirc Metro 2033, for example) are the ones where the x16/x16 showed the biggest gains over the x8/x8. Even then, 4xAA was necessary to show a major difference. By that I mean that the settings had to already be high enough for a high end system to be brought to its knees either way in order for the difference to be as high as, say, 7% FPS.

I would honestly not spend too much time ensuring you get x16/x16 instead of x8/x8.

 

[lilblood904]

Others can assist you with finding a board, but I wanted to address #2.

There is little to no difference most of the time between x16/x16 and x8/x8. The bandwidth of this is very rarely the bottleneck in a system.

In fact, the x8/x8 can often be faster than the x16/x16 because the data doesn't have to be routed through a NF200 chip.

Asus is making boards now with 1 slot of 8 and 2 slots of 16 and suggesting people go with 16/8 (forces x8/x8) instead of 16/16 because it avoids going through the NF200.

You would start to notice a serious difference only in extreme conditions, like if you were doing eyefinity with 3x 30 inch monitors on ultra settings.

An analysis I read showed the difference to be like +/- 1% or less most of the time (80 more or less frames out of 8000, for instance) difference between the two and the two often switched which was ahead and which was behind depending on the game being used for benchmarking.

IIRC, shader heavy games (iirc Metro 2033, for example) are the ones where the x16/x16 showed the biggest gains over the x8/x8. Even then, 4xAA was necessary to show a major difference. By that I mean that the settings had to already be high enough for a high end system to be brought to its knees either way in order for the difference to be as high as, say, 7% FPS.

I would honestly not spend too much time ensuring you get x16/x16 instead of x8/x8.

ty! for explaining. i was just looking at numbers and said 8x is half of 16 so theres gotta be sum kinda bigg diff. and i hope i can get a good mb kuzz im leaning towards the x79 setup n its like 500 dollars more then the i7 2600k.

so how u feel about the x79 vs p67 when it comes to DAW? think quad channel memory vs duel would show me a huge preformance?

 

[Raiddinn]

You would think that x16/x16 would be twice as good as x8/x8, but similar to how 16GB vs 32GB RAM is, the overage doesn't usually give benefits 1 for 1.

I am on a pretty strict budget myself so I don't think that the ultra high end provides enough value in relationship to its cost. If I had $3000 I would seriously think about getting 3 computers with it instead of just 1.

That being said, if the quad channel memory is as little upgrade over triple channel as triple channel is over dual channel, then there probably isn't much difference to aim for quad channel or any reason to pay a significant price premium for it.

 

[lilblood904]

again i was looking at numbers haha thought duel vs quad is double bandwidth so it would be 50% better then the duel channel if im using it for FL studios or Pro tools

 

[Raiddinn]

It is the nature of computers that you pay twice as much to get 25% more performance. Often times not even that.

The only numbers that are really helpful to increase in relationship to their cost are the ones that are actively bottlenecking you. Sadly, its not always easy to tell what those are.

It is kinda like the import tuner modification world in cars. A lot of people read the marketing materials saying company X tested this fat exhaust pipe and the car gained 15 horsepower from the upgrade. A lot of times when people take these home and slap it on their own car they actually get a horsepower downgrade, because not only was their old exhaust not bottlenecking them but the size of their old exhaust was more ideal than their new super sized exhaust.

I routinely tell people to take 1333 RAM instead of 1866 RAM because I think it will be harder for them to get the 1866 to work and even at 1333 the RAM probably won't be the bottleneck for their systems anyway.

It would be nice if someone could invent a program that could pinpoint exactly what is bottlenecking a computer. I think a hardware manufacturer like Crucial would buy it for a million dollars easy.

It would make figuring out what to upgrade a snap in any situation.

I am saddned sometimes when people go out and spend tons of money thinking they will be experiencing a huge gain in performance and it just doesn't happen like that. If you are bottlenecked at your video card and you go spend $1000 on a state of the art core with processor, motherboard, and RAM you could see less gain than just spending $200 on a video card and keeping the same core.