Which motherboard is better? I recently purchased Gigabyte EP45-UD3P. Crossfire/SLI is a must. Heard about Asus p5q pro and deluxe. Do they provide solid competition? Solid OCing? What about the DFI Lanparty boards? Any help would be great!
None of the three will do SLI or Crossfire correctly. Only the first PCIE-x16 slot is actualy x16 on those boards...the second slots are all x8. I believe the cheapest DFI that will do true Crossfire is the DFI LP LT X48-T2R...it has two full speed x16 slots plus one x4 slot for CrossFire + Physics at x16/x16/x4 bandwidth. I'm not sure if Gigabyte makes a dual x16 LGA775 board, but they make some very nice I7 boards with dual x16. Stay away from Asus...their quality has become terrible since they became an OEM.
Interesting. Anything in the 150 price range is what im aiming for. Im well aware of the 8x crossfire specs on the gigabyte, but i guess that comes with the price-range as well. Im pairing it up with Dual Patriot Viper series ram. 4 gigs pc2-6400 @ 4 4 4 12. Hopefully that pulls me through some gaming. I came across a Foxconn mobo with crossfire bundled with a HIS 512mb videocard for $200. Is it worth it? Or should i shell out another 50 bucks and get a higher end platform
End of the day, im just looking for a legit gaming mobo with crossfire/sli available. The best bang for my buck. Cheers
Contrary to what Killerbug says, P45 boards are fine for crossfire. I can even run quad crossfire reasonably well with 8/8x, the effect is there, but it's nowhere near as bad as you might think. You are restricted to crossfire with P45, you can only use SLi with an nforce (and they're crap). The EP45 boards are better than the P5Qs really, but neither are terrible. The Biostar TPower I45 is another worthy contender, as is the DFI T2RS. The best boards for crossfire are X48 chipset boards, but Gigabyte have some PCI express Q&C issues with those boards, and Biostar don't make an X48. Your best options are an X48 from DFI or an Asus Rampage Formula.
Thanks bud, quick question, came across a JetWay mobo with dual X16 pci e slots but the descp says 1 x PCI-Express x16 slot by 16-lane 1 x PCI-Express x16 slot by 4-lane So..simply, one lane is restricted by 4X speeds not really 16X?
