help with high end mobo choice

Doc_Savage

right guys i'm looking to use all your experience with mobos to help me make a more informed descision!

i'm in the market for a high end SLI mobo
I'll be plugging into it (already have all this):
AMD 4400+
2gigs of GSkill ram
a 7900gtx
580watt Hiper PSU
X-fi
and a TV tuner card

i need space for all these things and the space for possibly expanding into an sli setup. an integrated wireless lan would be good too!

i want ease of use and overclockability.

so what companys high end board meets my requirements?
ASUS?
DFI?
ABIT?
MSI?
Something else?

Optikus

If you want to overclock then go for DFI, no other boards overclock as well as them. If not then go for ASUS.

KdjaCL

With all those nice parts you should wait for one of these http://www.guru3d.com/article/mainboard/348/




kdjac

B00MSTICK

I'd go with DFI myself, thats an AM2 board Kd. His parts are 939 and DDR im assuming.

Doc_Savage

you assume correct!

what about dfi's reliability?

and i need all those available pci slots i said in my OP!

awhir

yes the normal dfi boards come with 2 but if your doing sli you will obly be able to use 1 becuase the oversized gfx card.but am pritty shure the dfi expert has more pci port and is ment to be a great board also asuses are good to.

awhir

and also for dfi if you have problems they have this http://dfi-street.com/

DirkVoodoo

I have always liked the look of the Asus A8N SLi premium board, its pricey but it gets good reviews and i like the idea of that cooling pipe. Of course, I'm a bit of a novice on these issues so maybe someone with experience of this board could comment

conzy

DFI or Epox hands down;)

The ASUS boards arent actually great overclockers, especially with Dual core chips..........

L31mr0d

the ASUS SLI Premium has problems with the onboard NIC, which won't be rectified till NF5, causing serious corruption in large downloads. I'd go with the DFI presonally

KdjaCL

I would wait for DFI to bring out their Am2 boards, assuming all will be compatible with 939 and DDR ram.


I have DFI SLI DR and it has 4 PCI E slots and 2 PCI


kdjac

awhir

KdjaC wrote:

I would wait for DFI to bring out their Am2 boards, assuming all will be compatible with 939 and DDR ram.


I have DFI SLI DR and it has 4 PCI E slots and 2 PCI


kdjac

hu its only got 2 pci slots and then 2 smaller slots and 2 pci exprees slots ??

art

I'm using a MSI K8N Diamond Plus. Very easy to overclock, lots of very nice features including dynamic over-clocking abilites, good support from MSI, lots of USB headers and the like. It's a bit pricey maybe, but otherwise a very nice, new, package.

B00MSTICK

AM2 Boards will only support Am2 Processors and probably just DDR2. A DFI expert will give you access to 2x PCI-E slots and 2 x PCI slots when used. You might have to get a usb Wi-fi im thinking. I'd recommend MSI aswell, maybe not the best overclockers but the boards are usually very stable.

awhir

see the 2 smallest things near the pic x16 slots what are they.

B00MSTICK

A pci-e x 1 slot and a pci-e x4 slot

awhir

what are they for

conzy

PCI-express 4X is just there for the laugh to be honest:D

PCI-express 1X will eventually replace PCI, there are a few TV tuners available for it.....

po0k

PCIe 4x is for hiigh I/O cards like storage controllers, 10Gig NICs, PPUs, video editing etc.

conzy

Its not used yet though and the Physx PPU is going to be PCI express 1X

Releasing it as PCI was a mistake IMO.....

astrofool

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe, has EVERYTHING on board, dual PCI-E 16x (real), a 4x and 1 PCI-E, and all passively cooled. Stable as a rock as well.

conzy

But it wont overclock as well as a DFI or an epox.......

Doc_Savage

but if the parts i need won't fit on it then it's not much use!

someone said something about a tv tuner that'll fit into PCI-E X1 or X4 slot?

where can i get one?

Dman_15

the second pci slot us useless if you run sli, the card will block the air intake of the lower graphics card

Doc_Savage

i need the two pci slots free at the bottom!

is this asus the best board that'll give me this?

B00MSTICK

Me wrote:

DFI expert will give you access to 2x PCI-E slots and 2 x PCI slots when used. You might have to get a usb Wi-fi im thinking.

The DFI expert will give you 2 bottom PCI slots free when in SLI

astrofool

The A8N-SLI Premium looks like this: http://www.unitycorp.co.jp/images/im-products/im-s939/im_a8n-sli_pre/a8n_sli_premium-2d.jpg

and will allow two PCI slots when both PCI-E x16 slots have a double size card in them.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe allows one PCI and one PCI-E x4 with two double size cards.

The expert also allows 2 PCI slots: http://us.dfi.com.tw/Upload/Product_Picture/expert1.jpg

DirkVoodoo

This is a handy thread, good one O/P

So which EpoX board is the one to go for then if you want an SLi configuration?

Steer clear of the A8N premium then?

po0k

conzymaher wrote:

Its not used yet though and the Physx PPU is going to be PCI express 1X

Releasing it as PCI was a mistake IMO.....

OFFTOPIC:
You're right in saying it should've been on PCIe 1x+ from launch, but I'm not convinced that would negate the latency issue. It would appear (from the recent benchmarks and investigation) that it's more of a combination of physical integration and how the PPU APIs place the functionality in the rendering process.
Tbh, PPUs could[should?] be integrated into the GPU or as a copper (co-processor) in either a dedicated/custom socket on the mobo or as a socket AM2/940-ish HT node like the Opteron FPGA coppers.
While this *may* not be a whole lot different to just having it as a discreet PCIe component, it may open possibilities of synching all or some of the PPU work with either the GPU or CPU operations. This may require redesign of the way things are calculated in games, but somethings simply cannot be computed until others have finished. Quantum computing coul be useful here
Of course the counter-argument is that we may simply have to accept that having physics acceleration will produce massive increases in physics-accelerated objects in games at the cost of a hit in rendering efficiency. The gpu essentially has to wait around for PPU/CPU to finish calculating the scene to be rendered. This is where tighter integration of the scene-setup and rendering process is needed. Graphical physics rendering is helping to build the bridge from the other side, as are things like MSIs 2x MXM socketed GPU cards.
THe traditional concept of how things fit together is slowly exploding, there is alot of flux in the tech industry at the moment as people try different ideas and it'll be another 4 years or so before things get sorted. The sheer size of cooling solutions required today (and needing 2 full cards for SLI!) is a major issue. I think people are accepting that as par-for-course far too easily. Clock-speed in GPUs isn't necessarily as beneficial as having lots and lots of parallelism. 2 gpu cores (or 2x the pipelines) at 300Mhz would consume (*waste*) far less energy while delivering similar performance to one core running at 600Mhz. Both solutions *can* fit on one card/package, but the wider core would consume less power at the lower frequency. Therefore, the PCB real-estate required for excess power circuitry could be reduced, allowing *more* cores to be integrated.
Likewise, reducing the voltage will also result in an exponential drop in power consumption.
This is kicking off now in multicore cpus (Thank you Alpha EV8) on the desktop as they started hitting frequency walls too often. It's more a matter of a change in CPU design (TLP Vs ILP) and programming style (Single Vs Multi-threaded) and fitting as many cores on dies as you can and running them at moderate clocks. The Cell is an example of this, though the SPIs are not general purpose procs.

Jesus. That's a post and a half.

On-Topic:
If you're going SLI, there's no reason you *have* to have dual-slot cards. Watercooling is still an option - if even just for the GPUs, and there will always be single-slot solutions available.

conzy

Nice post syxpak

First of all it was crazy to release the PPU on PCI.

*example taken from forums.amd.com*

Who is more likely to buy it?

- Granny, who has a PCI only motherboard
- Jimmy, who is on s754 with his AGP 9500 and can barely run Doom 3
- Xavier, who just got done buying 2 7900gtxs and already has his two PCI slots filled with a sound card and TV tuner:D

This is the epox SLI board, you can still use 2 PCI slots and the PCI-Express 1X when running sli.......

And I think CPU/GPU/PPU should all be installed in sockets on the mainboard and cooled one large cooler with a 140mm fan

Excuse my paint diagram, but PCs should be designed like this:



P.s SLI is a waste on money If you dont already have one card..............

A single high end card is always cheaper, quiter, cooler and has the option to add a second one later........

astrofool

Adding to Syxpaks, it has become ridiculous that the most easily parallelisable component in a computer, from a chip POV is now the one using multiple cards, which are hugely inefficient, both in memory, and power terms to the system. Also, unless ATI or nVidia take a hit in graphical prowess by giving alot of die space to PPU type functions, then using SLI for physics is absolutely ridiculous, and akin to using the second core of a dual core CPU for graphics processing, they're just not suited, and work fundamentally differently.

Havok missed the boat with regards add in cards (they had the oppertunity to start designing one years ago). It'd be hoped that MS could unify a DirectX PPU standard, and allow for other manufacturers/solutions, and if a plateau was reached, then that functionality could be added to motherboards or CPU's (but I doubt it will ever level off, just like GPU's never will).

The great thing about PCI-E is that its a dedicated channel to and from the chipset, unlike the shared PCI topology, which can have noise issues (sound cards *cough* Creative), and does allow for the Co-Processor method of adding cards. What could be more interesting is if AMD goes ahead with a HT interface for cards.

I doubt a dedicated socket for GPU/PPU will ever be along, simply due to the need of having high bandwidth memory for each, can you imagine trying to run an R580 off system memory? On-die/package memory can only get so large, and it will always be a case that a card fits more, remember, ATI's mem controller can already handle 2gb memory sizes, and i'd hazard a guess that we'll have a (real)single card 1gb gfx by the end of the year/early next, depending on the take up of GDDR4.

[edit] I forgot to mention, about 9 months ago, it was revealed that AMD was working on an on-chip PCI-E solution.[/edit]

po0k

You could buy ATI/nVidia professional cards with 1Gig mem yesterday, but you're right. I neglected to mention memory at all, though that's looking set to change. There have been some recent developments in various little aspects of die production and new ways of looking at basic things like generating a clock signal which make me optimistic about what's probable and possible in the next 5-10 years.

wan teh 8-way raid5 sandwich toaster!

Doc_Savage

Stay on topic lads!!

anyway.. it looks like i'll be after the dfi expert board then!

one question: if i have two 7900gtx's in, would there be space behind them to fit a watercooling block onto the chipset?

DemonOfTheFall

KdjaC wrote:

I would wait for DFI to bring out their Am2 boards, assuming all will be compatible with 939 and DDR ram.

AM2 is a new socket which won't fit 939 chips, also takes DDR2 not DDR.

po0k

Doc_Savage wrote:

Stay on topic lads!!

anyway.. it looks like i'll be after the dfi expert board then!

one question: if i have two 7900gtx's in, would there be space behind them to fit a watercooling block onto the chipset?

Ask on dfi-street.com, though it would help if you specced what waterblock you're looking to put on the mobo chipset, what fittings, type of tubing, retention mechanism etc.

awhir

Doc_Savage wrote:

Stay on topic lads!!

anyway.. it looks like i'll be after the dfi expert board then!

one question: if i have two 7900gtx's in, would there be space behind them to fit a watercooling block onto the chipset?

if you want to make a bit of space you can sell 1 of your 7900gtx to me

conzy

awhir wrote:

if you want to make a bit of space you can sell 1 of your 7900gtx to me

Are you never happy?:rolleyes:



Stick with the X1800XT it will be better in the long run...........

po0k

aye, a swathe of HDR modes waiting to be tapped.

Doc_Savage

awhir wrote:

if you want to make a bit of space you can sell 1 of your 7900gtx to me

they'll be driving the thirty inch dell monitor at maximum res!

i think i might need them!

ShiverinEskimo

DFI FTW.

Nuff said - overclocking was a breeze with it.

conzy

Yup, I cant recommend them enough

Or Epox if your on a budget;)