motherboard help!

[1nexus]

I am new to these boards so firstly hi all!

I am upgrading my machine and have already made my mind up on these components:
e6750 cpu
2x1gb patriot 6400 4-4-4-12
msi 8600gt oc

what i am undiceded on is the motherboard, i don't need an sli board or particularly need raid i feel drawn to the xfx 650i mobo allthough i have no idea why i just seem to always end up looking at it. should i be considering a p35 or 680i board and if so why would they be better. i am on a bit of a budget so £50-£70 is my price range.

thanks in advance for any and all help

 

[Maziar]

680i , get it if u want to use SLI , and SLI is when u want to play @ 1920x1200 or higher , if u play lower than that reoslution , go for P35 board, for that price go for :
P35 DS3L
http://scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=661326

or P35 DS3R

 

[Zorg]

Agreed

 

[1nexus]

thanks for the reply, I have used gigabyte boards before and can't say i've ever had any probs with them so i'm happy to take your advice.....

the board i'm looking at getting is the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R although not the exact board you mentioned it looks like a close cousin or at least with my limited knowledge it seems to be, it's just about in my price range and seems to have some nice future proofing features i've just got a couple of questions there are 2 revisions of the board so obviously i would have to ring the supplier and find out which one it is they are selling and on the cpu compatability chart it supports the e6750 i am buying but says f3 which i am assuming means firmware revision 3 of the bios, so the questions are is it likely that the board i will buy will be the latest firmware revision because i have read numerous horror stories about bios updates going bad and if i ended up with a revision 1 board would that matter or do i really need to try to find a supplier with the revision 2 board.........looking at the two revisions side by side on a comparisson chart i can't see the difference

thanks for all the help,

 

[tlmck]

What you get with the P35C is RAID, double the SATA slots(8), and support for DDR2 and DDR3 memory. It is always good to go for the latest rev. board you can get. In this case the latest P35C is rev. 2.

I got rev.1 of the DS3L board in April and have never had a problem. I think the updates to the DS3R boards were memory compatibility related.

 

[1nexus]

thnx tlmck that makes seense to me so all i need to know really is about the bios version, so lets assume i find the revision 2 board somewhere, how do i find out which bios version it will ship with, or will it almost certainly be version 1, also what will happen when i boot the machine with version 1 when it requires bios version 3 to support my cpu. will it not work at all or will it just not recognise my cpu correctly?

 

[Maziar]

it wont recognize your CPU i think

 

[tlmck]

thnx tlmck that makes seense to me so all i need to know really is about the bios version, so lets assume i find the revision 2 board somewhere, how do i find out which bios version it will ship with, or will it almost certainly be version 1, also what will happen when i boot the machine with version 1 when it requires bios version 3 to support my cpu. will it not work at all or will it just not recognise my cpu correctly?

Given the board and CPU you are buying you should not have any boot up trouble. The F3 is the BIOS rev. you mentioned earlier.

If for some reason, the BIOS does not recognize your CPU correctly, the machine should still POST and allow you to run the Qflash utility built into the BIOS. I have not used it yet as my machine runs fine as is, and I never update the BIOS unless I need to fix a problem.

At any rate, as the POST screen comes up, you press the "end" key to enter Qflash directly, or you can go into BIOS(Del key) and then press "F8" in the BIOS main screen. You will need to download the latest BIOS beforehand and transfer it to a floppy or a USB thumb drive. Then simply follow the onscreen instructions.

 

[1nexus]

so thats the components decided upon i guess, just has anyone used the GA-P35C-DS3R with either the patriot ram and/or the e6750 straight out of their respective boxes. I really don't want to have to update the bios and would like reasurance the ram is compatible