X58 On A Budget: Seven Sub-$200 Core i7 Boards

[badbob233]

i'm not too experienced with system building, but why the critique about raid card and driver installation if all the boards are ich10r with onboard raid 0,1,5,10?

 

[badbob233]

also, can't the floppy raid drivers be installed from an usb floppy drive?

 

[Guest]

Just fyi, I have an MSI X58 Pro-E and reading the manual tells me you are wrong about the layout of the full length PCI_E slots. According to the manual the two 16x slots are PCI_E2 and PCI_E4. The 4x slot is PCI_E5. And if you look at page 15 of the manual it shows the layout for the full PCI_E slots are actually 16x-16x-4x. They are not as is reported in this article 16x-4x-16x.

 

[Kithzaru]

I felt like a dirty hooker when i read this because "i stillneed a floppy drive for my raid setup.

Good article though. I like when they do several comparisons instead of just 2-3. Good stuff.

 

[cjmu]

Get rid of floppy already. I haven't used one for years. nlite is your friend people, slipstream it ffs!

don't agree with abandoning PCI slots though. I think that there are way to many useful cards out there. (I'm being selfish and thinking of my Auzentech Prelude )

 

[marraco]

some motherboards without official SLI support can be enabled with a BIOS tweaking. Since the P6T SE is so similar to the P6T, probably is easy to hack.

Altough I would not experiment with a P6T SE until I get enough info from Internet.

 

[randomizer]

Anyone wanting to ditch PCI entirely must be out of their mind. PCI is still the standard for non-graphics expansion cards.

 

[marraco]

OT: I had just seen an 7 PCI-Express mother on ASUS. no space for PCI

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]OT: I had just seen an 7 PCI-Express mother on ASUS. no space for PCI[/citation]

As long as we're OT, I saw early PCIe development projects that had placed the slot closer to the edge, so that a PCIe x1 and PCI slot could occupy the same latitude on the motherboard. I don't know why the group decided to cancel that idea, but it would have been a great excuse to trash the "kill PCI" groupies.

 

[midnightgun]

I hope they don't remove floppy connections for awhile. I use it all the time for fixing peoples pc's or installing xp on older systems with raid or odd controllers (mine included, thought windows 7 may finally get rid of xp installation fun).

I'd just like to know why the floppy disk I previously used is dead every time I need to use it again and have to use a new one -_- I feel like such a noob going into a store to buy a pack of floppy disks.

 

[BrianInfo]

After reading the Overclocking section, I wonder if DDR3-1066 CAS-5 will not be supported by Gigabyte EX58-UD3R or ASRock X58 Extreme?!

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]brianinfo[/nom]After reading the Overclocking section, I wonder if DDR3-1066 CAS-5 will not be supported by Gigabyte EX58-UD3R or ASRock X58 Extreme?![/citation]

Could always use 1333 CAS 6 instead, it has less latency (real time).

 

[BrianInfo]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Could always use 1333 CAS 6 instead, it has less latency (real time).[/citation]

According to AnandTech "Memory Scaling on Core i7 - Is DDR3-1066 Really the Best Choice?" quote: a DDR3-1066 C7 kit like the one we used from Patriot that has the capability of performing at 1066 C5 with a small bump in voltage and that can reach DDR3-1600 C9 (an excellent comprise setting due to pricing changes this past week) at warranty and system friendly voltages.

(Though it did not specify the detail how to bump 1066 CAS-7 to CAS-5)

For my personal usage, the performance between 1066 CAS-5 to 1333 CAS-6 is not that much a difference, but the price is. According to newegg.com, the cheapest 1333 6-6-6-24 (not 18) $133 vs 1066 CAS-7 $90... So that's why I was trying to make sure which motherboard supports CAS 5.

 

[Aerobernardo]

[citation][nom]Kill@dor[/nom]I don't think there will be too much difference between the 2.[/citation]

I think so, but there is still a major point: multi GPU. I do not know if in the near future (Meaning Dx11 VGAs) PCIE 2.0 8x will be enought. Since the P55 chipset only let you do 16x with one VGA, I do believe that i7 might be better from a gamer's view.

The problem is, and that's only my meaningless opinion, i7 will focus on 6 cores and more to come while i5 (Meaning lynfield with any name scheme intel have for us) will probably focus on 4 cores with higher frequency. Comparing the same price and heat (high frequency quads vs low frequency hexas), i5 (lynfield) might be better for gamers from a CPU standpoint.

That's what's intriguing me for a while.

 

[drokkon]

Hm... great article, but I was sad to see no synopsis of the P6T SE on your conclusion page. It's the one I'm leaning toward, and your article didn't really change my mind. Anyone else have experience with it?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]brianinfo[/nom]According to AnandTech "Memory Scaling on Core i7 - Is DDR3-1066 Really the Best Choice?" quote: a DDR3-1066 C7 kit like the one we used from Patriot that has the capability of performing at 1066 C5 with a small bump in voltage and that can reach DDR3-1600 C9 (an excellent comprise setting due to pricing changes this past week) at warranty and system friendly voltages.(Though it did not specify the detail how to bump 1066 CAS-7 to CAS-5)For my personal usage, the performance between 1066 CAS-5 to 1333 CAS-6 is not that much a difference, but the price is. According to newegg.com, the cheapest 1333 6-6-6-24 (not 18) $133 vs 1066 CAS-7 $90... So that's why I was trying to make sure which motherboard supports CAS 5.[/citation]

You'll see a review on Tom's Hardware of budget DDR3 kits that can easily do 1333 CAS 6, cheaply. Since DDR3-1333 cycles faster, DDR3-1333 CAS 6 response times are actually shorter than DDR3-1066 CAS 5.

 

[BrianInfo]

Thanks, I will go look for that review.

 

[BrianInfo]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]You'll see a review on Tom's Hardware of budget DDR3 kits that can easily do 1333 CAS 6, cheaply. Since DDR3-1333 cycles faster, DDR3-1333 CAS 6 response times are actually shorter than DDR3-1066 CAS 5.[/citation]

I have read the most recent articles in Memory (Jan till now), they did not offer any reviews on DDR3-1333 CAS6. The closest they used was CAS7. So I dunno if you have seen it somewhere else? and when you said cheap, you mean by how much? Newegg.com is fair reference, which gives me $43 difference between the DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1066.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-scaling-i7,2325.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/triple-channel-ddr3-i7,2128.html

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]brianinfo[/nom]I have read the most recent articles in Memory (Jan till now), they did not offer any reviews on DDR3-1333 CAS6. The closest they used was CAS7. So I dunno if you have seen it somewhere else? and when you said cheap, you mean by how much? Newegg.com is fair reference, which gives me $43 difference between the DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1066.http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2325.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2264.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2128.html[/citation]

The new budget triple-channel review hasn't been published yet, but it is in rotation with several other new articles that are being published over the next week or so. Keep an eye out for it!

 

[u48802109]

Dear Ryan
This board do support the S3 state. The S3 state was disabled on default BIOS setting, so you need to enable it in BIOS.

 

[crytek]

sorry tom's but you can be more accurate .
i bought this board cause i trusted your review . let me correct :
like the most mobos manufactures the graphics pci-e layout is 16x/16x/4x and NOT 16x/4x/16x as you mentioned in this review thus the huge dual slot vga cards doesn't fit freely in the pci-e 16x slots and NO air-flow when running crossfirex or sli configuration , so i wish this review to be updated and correcting the wrong data .

 

[crytek]

sorry tom's but you can be more accurate .
i bought this board cause i trusted your review . let me correct :
like the most mobos manufactures the graphics pci-e layout is 16x/16x/4x and NOT 16x/4x/16x as you mentioned in this review thus the huge dual slot vga cards doesn't fit freely in the pci-e 16x slots and NO air-flow when running crossfirex or sli configuration , so i wish this review to be updated and correcting the wrong data .

 

[crytek]

sorry tom's but you can be more accurate .
i bought this board cause i trusted your review . let me correct :
like the most mobos manufactures the graphics pci-e layout is 16x/16x/4x and NOT 16x/4x/16x as you mentioned in this review thus the huge dual slot vga cards doesn't fit freely in the pci-e 16x slots and NO air-flow when running crossfirex or sli configuration , so i wish this review to be updated and correcting the wrong data .

 

[Mikey_81]

I'm waiting for my third ASRock X58 Extreme to arrive from NewEgg. The first mobo had a bad memory socket, but otherwise worked. The second one was DOA. Reading the rave reviews on this mobo, I'm mystified why I'm having so much trouble getting a good board. This is my last try. If the third one doesn't work, I'm going back to ASUS.

 

[liquidsnake718]

I hope Gigabyte updates the Ud3r to 3 channels of RAM. If they do come out with a usb3.0 next year, even one slot, im buying it immediatly even at $300. By then everything some be Win7 standard and SP1 should be out along with 300GTX's and cheap SSDs. BD will be standard as well!!!! Cant wait