X38 question

[W-Molders]

hi,,. I am going to buy a E6750 I already bought a 8800 GTS and Raptor....

my question is.. as a gaming rig, is an X38 going to offer me anything for the next year and a half?

as far as I know, the only thing on the X38 that is new than some of the P35 boards out there is the new PCI...

I was looking at the Gigabyte p35 775 board that has dd2 with 1333 fsb and options for dd3 when it does get cheaper .

I was thinking that the new PCI may improve the onboard LAN port for smoother online game experience?

what are your thoughts... thanks

 

[sadness20]

I was going to post same thing.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=6&id=2315&pg=2

Only difference i see is Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 has dual 16x pci 2.0 express,No idea its going to overclock better then current p35 gigabye boards.

Isn't PCI 2.0 Allready exist on Gigabytye p35 boards or I'm wrong?

I was going to wait til september for my new x38 mobo.....

 

[W-Molders]

so my understanding is that its advantage is for vid cards only? I am confused I really dont want to wait till sept if I can buy now and be ok for gaming and online gaming for a while

 

[tehrobzorz]

more to future cpus than video card oriented/

pci is already at v2.3

its the pci EXPRESS 2 thats new. providing 2x the bandwith and power output

 

[sadness20]

I meant to say PCI 2 EXPRESS does exist on current p35 boards.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/06/p35_supports_pcie_2/

If current can support pci express 2.0 I dont its not worth it getting x38mobo unless u want to use sli feature 2x16 pci express slots.

 

[tehrobzorz]

yes, current p35 chipsets can support pcie2.0 but, im not sure about the slots/ motherboard circuitry.

since it provides double everytthing, youd think theyd need more lanes/ capacitators or watever.. for that. im not sure.


the 680i does not support pcie2

 

[systemlord]

Yes wait X38 will use PCI_Express 2.0 that will increase PCI Express bandwidth by 200%-300%. I'll say this, "Nvidia's next graphics card will be using PCI Express 2.0."

 

[tehrobzorz]

along with r700 and every other card after that.

note that, amds rd 790 and nvidias m73 are also comming out soon. rumor has it that amds chipset is comming out before the x38 so.

rd790 then x38 then m73 and mcp 73

 

[Daveal3d]

I would recommend waiting for the new Nvidia chipset for Intel the C73 which (based on the provided info) will support PCI-E 2.0 and DDR-3 1600
and according to the info it will also support FSB1600 , but thats probably fake.

However the best reason to wait till November for this chipset is that it features 3 full X16 PCI-E 2.0 slots.

I'm personally waiting for this chipset and the G92 , to really take advantage of the PCI-E 2.0.

 

[tehrobzorz]

i agree and yes its C73 not m rofl iuno waht i was doing.

but yeah g92 + c73 = kickass computer ^^

personally i wouldnt bother with midrange chipsets at all. as i norm say, a good mobo is a good backbone that should last for years to come.

( JUST LOOK AT 975X you can tell intel will support x38 too!! ^^ )

 

[EV700]

It's definitely a /bangheadhard decision. The Nvidia 9800 GTX is said to be twice the performance of the 8800 GTX with a few new features; it could be that only PCI Express 2.0 can give the 9800 GTX the bandwidth to maximize results. I'm in the same boat of trying to wait it out as long as possible to build, because I feel PCI Express 2.0 coupled with the 9800 GTX for probably just a couple hundred dollars more will improve a good deal on what our options are now.

 

[Maziar]

Well according bit-tech , if P35 supports PCIE-2 , then why not get it ?

 

[EV700]

Because no motherboard currently states that it supports PCI-E 2.0; it probably requires a physical change. The news that PCI-E 2.0 is supported on the P35 chipset came after many motherboards were already made.

 

[sadness20]

I saw it somewhere that it doesnt need phsyical change only need bios update for current p35 board to get pci 2.0.

 

[EV700]

I'd like to see that article for sure.

 

[systemlord]

I saw it somewhere that it doesnt need phsyical change only need bios update for current p35 board to get pci 2.0.

PCI-Express 2.0 allows up to 300 watts to pass through the PCI-E bus, so please tell me how a bios update will allow that? Current PCI-E allows only 75 watts to pass through the bus.

 

[T8RR8R]

PCI express 2.0 allows more power as you've mentioned an it also runs at speeds of up to 32x instead of just 16x. On another note though, I don't even think the G92 cards will utilize ALL that 16x. However like someone else said, it's a great backbone for whatever comes later on. I would like to see Nvidia's retaliation to the X38. Obviously the 700 series will improve alot over the 600 series but nobody knows much about that yet. Also I'm glad that Nvidia is playing leapfrog in the chipset market with Intel. Even if a product seems to come out later it'd be fine if it was better in some ways and offered something the other competition didn't, unlike the R600. Although R600 cards are coming down in prices to make them more justified. Getting back to the X38 though, I'll be surprised to see these board going for less than $250. Take a look at 975x boards, they still aren't that cheap. I personally don't mind spending ~200 for a board, but it's gotta be pretty sweet.

 

[EV700]

I'm thinking since the 9800 GTX is twice the processing power, it could use more than the current 250 MB/s. PCI Express bandwidth right now is 8 GB/s and some 8800 cards use about 5 GB/s as it is.

 

[tehrobzorz]

but no one is sure that those specs are real. sure enough this will be interesting times ahead of us.

i suspect that the x38 will knock out all 975x counterparts. we should see them dropping as soon as these hit the market. although no one is sure, they might as well have already stopped making the 975 and resellers still have alot of stock.

one thing i do hope to have on the x38 is SLi. i swear, they will sell a hell of alot more of these chips regardless of the price. i think plainly the 680i for intel is too much ( in AUSTRALIA>) and if you wanted to settle for the 650i, it wouldnt even be on the map. the thing is, that their either expensive, or non existant. =((((

so now, i propose sli and crossfire on the intel boards. r600 as a cpu helperer.. and g92s and g100s as your VR producers. ^^>?

 

[T8RR8R]

975x shouldn't be hard to beat at all since, Nvidia can offer the same 8x 8x performance for a little over half the price and double the performance to 16x 16x performance for the same price. Ontop of that 975x is going on 2 years old already.

 

[Synthetickiller]

It seems like a good idea, but I think there's a few things to point out.

The first x38 boards have new things, mainly the pci-e 2.0.

While this seems great, no manufacturer will produce cards that ONLY support this new standard. Only early adopters will be able to purchase these cards and their profits will be non-existent.

PCI-e 1.0 (or whatever the current standard is) is still what the majority uses, plus the bandwidth of the port has not been maxed. Its the same thing as SATA 1. There's Sata 2, but theres no need for it, hence the raptor's choice for sata 1.

Are you going for SLI or crossfire? the x38 will probably support this. There are a few p35 boards that have crossfire support already. Both the p35 and x38 support penryn.

I went p35 b/c I can't see a good reason to wait for x38 (I don't need SLI/Crossfire or any extra slots). Getting a Q6600 to 4.0ghz on water will be hard enough on a p35 due to heat problems, NOT restrictions due to the mobo.

I'd be surprised to see the 9800gtx support ONLY pci-e 2.0. That will kill the card. How many people would be able to buy it? 200 at most?

And the pci-e 2.0 is not going to be a physical change from what I heard. you can run current PCI-E graphics cards in it. Maybe the slot is larger for more pins for the 2.0?

 

[systemlord]

Just because PCI-E 2.0 is out doesn't mean cards can handle all that bandwidth. If I were to max out Peg performence in bios the 8800's couldn't handle it right now. Its a step in the right direction though.

 

[T8RR8R]

Even the 8800GTS barely uses more than 8x and the 8800Ultra doesn't even utilize all that 16x has to offer. If the G92 is all it's supposed to be, then maybe 32x bandwidth will be worth the mobo upgrade but other than that. It's all fluff, for now. I'm guessing whatever generation after G92 comes out we'll probably start to see 16x as being an issue. Who knows though, things might be held up by the CPU being a huge bottleneck unless you can afford a 1,200 CPU and the GPU market might slow down a little, or venture elsewhere.

 

[tehrobzorz]

uh for those of you..


pcie 2.0 is backwards compatible with v1.0

theyre not stupid.

 

[T8RR8R]

uh for those of you..


pcie 2.0 is backwards compatible with v1.0

theyre not stupid.

That's true about pcie 2.0, although I wonder if they are stupid...sometimes.