What motherboard?

IrishRover

I am looking to buy an Intel socket 775 board that supports both the Pentium 4 D and the newer Core 2 Duo, so I can buy a cheaper P4D now and upgrade to the Core 2 Duo when they come down in price.

So I'm planning on having this motherboard for a while and want to buy the best I can afford. I have been looking at a couple of high end boards like the MSI and Gigabyte ones linked below.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323504
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323506

The MSI has the 975X chipset and the Gigabyte has the P965. The 975 is supposed to be the premium chipset which supports two PCI-E video cards in SLI mode, but the 965 supports faster memory and other things like more USB and SATA connectors. However the 965 chipset doesn't support SLI. The Gigabyte also seems to have lots more bios options for adjusting the clock speeds of everything.

There doesn't seem to be one with all of the best features in one though. Is this because the 965 chipset is only new and hasn't matured yet? Should I wait for another couple of months to see what comes out? Is it likely that ICH8 and SLI and all the features of both the chipsets will be added to the one soon?

Ultimately I'll be disappointed if I can't upgrade at some stage to SLI video cards, so I suppose that makes the decision for me to get the MSI with the 975 chipset. Does anyone have any other motherboard recommendations?

PogMoThoin

There will be no sli support with conroe only xfire.

I posted why i like my dfi mobo in this thread, don't wanna re-type: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054983607

IrishRover

I think I read on this thread that there is SLI with hacked drivers at the moment so that they expect official drivers soon.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=110054

I'll read the thread you linked to now...

PogMoThoin

No, there will not be official drivers, no sli support without the hack drivers. Even the 7950gx2 doesn't work on some mobo's, mine included. I have the hack driver saved here somewhere if you need them.

IrishRover

That's a real pity. What is the issue? I think I read somebody fell out with somebody and that's why there's no support for it but I can't remember the proper details now. Well maybe there will be support at some point in the future, but not in the immediate future anyway I guess.

Xfire is the ATI version isn't it? I just don't like ATI so I'm not going to buy any of their cards though.

Years ago a friend of mine had 2 Voodoo2's in SLI mode and the modern equivalent from the company that effectively killed off 3DFX appeals to me somehow. If you could send me the drivers that would be great to have them anyway. It's irishrover at gmail.com Cheers.

BTW, I read the thread you linked to but I couldn't see where you wrote the actual motherboard - just DFI?

PogMoThoin

Intel have already said there will be no sli support for conroe, but with Ati merging with Amd there possibly could be in future

mobo in my sig. this 1: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/DFI.html

IrishRover

Ah right, didn't cop on to that in your signature.
Will look that up and try to read more about the SLI issue.

PogMoThoin

This Asus is 1 of the best mobo's out there & is on special offer this week only on OCUK: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Asus_177.html

PogMoThoin

IrishRover wrote:

Will look that up and try to read more about the SLI issue.

Interesting reading, seems the nvidia chipsets are a piece of sh1t & won't go over 350fsb: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4053
And now Dfi have even pulled out of a lanparty mobo: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114768

Hopefully nvidia have better things to come. I'm dissapointed that they are willing to let people move to Ati :http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114212

IrishRover

Which Asus board on that link is the one you mean? The Asus P5B Deluxe? The ability to clock up and down from within the OS does appeal to me. Having onboard wireless might be useful too. Why do you think it is one of the best though? What about the Asus P5W PH Deluxe? I like that the P5W also supports ECC ram.

Is this the board you have?
http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=4696&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=US

I have to say I'm not familiar with DFI but I have heard of DFI Lanparty I think. From reading the 2nd link you posted on xtremesystems they seem to be a very well respected make.


Reading the second page on the third link you quoted from xtremesystems, one guy wrote:

My question to Nvidiots:

Due to the lack of immediate availablilty of any NF590 Core2 Duo motherbaords I purchased an Intel 975X chipset based motherboard to run my dual NVidia graphics cards in SLI.

I then find that your drivers do not allow SLI to run on this chipset.

I can't tell you how disappointed I am to find this to be the case, to make things worse, older drivers have been modified in the community to allow sli to run.

Now that I know SLI can run and successfully operate on this chipset but you choose not to activate it I am even more emotional about the whole situation.

So before I switch to ATI Radeon X1950XTX, please can you tell me when you will release an SLI driver for the Intel 975x chipset.

Many thanks.


NVidiots Response:

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer Care.

Due to the competitive nature of this business, we are not able to provide any information on rumors or future unannounced NVIDIA software. We can neither confirm nor deny if or when NVIDIA will release drivers that allow SLI on NON NVIDIA chipset's. Once new software and a Formal Press Release from the company has been officially announced, we would be glad to answer questions and provide information. Please note that since its introduction in 2004, SLI Technology is a exclusive function reserved for NVIDIA nForce MCPs only and is marketed and advertised as so.

So it's not that the 965 Intel chipsets don't support SLI, it's just a driver issue that NVidia deliberately disable support for SLI when the driver detects any Intel chipset? I'm all confused now about the whole SLI thing and who's not supporting what.

After reading about DFI was thinking maybe should wait for the next DFI board with the next nVidia chipset that will have quad SLI, but sure it's always the way that there's something just around the corner that you just need to wait a few months for it to come out. It is a bit headwrecking though...

PogMoThoin

IrishRover wrote:

Is this the board you have?
http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=4696&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=US

:rolleyes: Yep, thats the 1.

astrofool

AFAIK, in their current form, the 965 chipset will not allow xfire/SLI to work, as it does not allow communication between PCI-E cards. The 975 does support this, and as such can support both xfire and SLI.

Of course IrishRover, ATI boards can support SLI and nVidia boards can support xFire, but the drivers don't allow it. 975 supports xFire because Intel made a deal with ATI. No such deal has been made with nVidia.

There's also the validation process to go through. nVidia's boards are made with SLI in mind, and designed to its tolerances, other boards are not. Were nVidia to release a generic SLI driver for all boards, then they couldn't guarantee stable performance, and any problems would be blamed on them, as they'd have to support it. Now they should be easily able to validate other boards, or at least give details why and have Intel/ATI/Via fix it in a chipset update, but why would they? The profits on chipsets is very high for the amount of tech it takes to produce them, compared to complicated GPU's, and if they supported SLI elsewhere, the profits for it would not go to them. Until ATI has dongle-less xFire, then the competition isn't there to threaten SLI and for nVidia to support other boards.