North bridge chips

[kickme21]

I am looking at boards and I am having a bit of trouble deciding what board to go for. I will only be using Nvidia cards but may use SLI one day but not 100% sure.

I am likeing the GA X38-DQ6 because of the PCI-E 2.0 (I know nothing take advantage as yet but still nice) and that it should be a good performer when it matures a bit. I am definatly getting the penrin 45nm proc the is a done deal.

I see the P35 chip set is about £20 cheaper for what I was looking at so then I ask the question is it worth saving that. I will over clock a bit but not heavly at all.

Opinions are welcome.

 

[Scotteq]

If you want SLI, you will need to buy a board with an nVidia chipset. nVidia refuses to licence SLI to Intel. I am aware of some hacked SLI drivers for the 975 chipset floating around on the web, but haven't seen/heard of any for anything newer than that.

You can run Crossfire on the X-38 to do the same thing (dual video cards working on the same app). But that obviously means using ATI video cards.

Personally, I have a P35 chipset with a single 8800GTx. Works great, and runs everything I have at 16 by 10 at max settings with no hesitation. Even on Vista. <grin> For the future? I'm watching for the next generation GPUs to hit before I decide. I'm not worried about dual 16x support, since even the best current cards don't max out 8, and my board is new/good. So the plan is to wait and see.

 

[Maziar]

Get a P35 board, it will support pci-e 2.0 but not @ full bandwidth(which wont have alot of difference)

the main difference between P35 and X38 is the PCI-E 2.0 ( as i mentioned) which isnt a serious issue, P35 supports 45nm CPU and 1333MHZ CPUs too

Good P35 boards are ASUS P5K-E WIFI , GIGABYTE P35 DS3R ,
ABIT IP35 PRO

 

[kickme21]

tough choice to save the money and go dor the Asus board or just say hell just go for the gigabyte x38 board