Help me decide P45 - Gigabyte or MSI?

I would say the Gigabyte board, most people have had good experience with Gigabyte boards and it's a little less before rebate.
 
gigabyte, far less issues, this comes from my experience with amd 770, intel p35, and intel p43. All from gigabyte and it booted up on first try. Just update the bios and drivers and it should treat you well.
 
I loved my MSI Neo2-FR and it ran 505fsb without breaking a sweat so I grabbed the P45 Neo3-FR to try myself.
 
tuksonrider said:
MSI Neo3-FR P45
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130180

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128345

It's going with a Q6600 CPU & ATI 4870 video card
Click to expand...

Both of those boards use the P45 chipset, so their performance will be similar up until probably around 400Mhz. Once you want to push higher than that, the small heatsink of the DS3L will require additional cooling (moreso the higher you go). The MSI has better NB/mosfet cooling, so you shouldn't need additional cooling to reach above 400Mhz.

One nitpick: why the hell do either of these boards use the P45 chipset instead of the P43?!? The only difference between P45 and P43 is Crossfire support, yet both of these P45 boards don't even include a 2nd PCI-E 16x slot... wtf?!? :mad:

With that said, I'd go for the MSI or the P43-DS3L (and a 40-60mm fan for the NB).
 
Thanks all. Well... I decided to go with... the ASUS P5Q
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131295

I know I know, wasn't even one I had in mind, but I liked the features (NB/SP/mosfet heatsinks & 8pin +12v). I'm running a Q6600 and plan to OC.

Quick question, This is my first intel chipset board. (normally an nvidia fan). I sually just go to nvidia's website and d/l the latest nForce board drivers.

Where do I get the latest intel P45 modo drivers? (Vista 64bit).

The ASUS website is PAINFULLY slow for me.
 
tuksonrider said:
The ASUS website is PAINFULLY slow for me.
Click to expand...

No it's slow for everyone. Been like that since 2003. :eek:

Unfortunately, the Asus website is the only place I know of to get chipset drivers for Asus motherboards. So start downloading the drivers now and they should be finished by the time you get the motherboard, a week later :D

Also, one thing you should note about that P5Q motherboard. Look at the placement of the 24Pin connector. Stupid place to put the 24Pin connector IMO since it could interfere with a tall HSF and screw up the cable management.
 
Heh, yeah. I saw that placement of the 24pin power connector. It's really in a weird place.

Oh well, I got 4 days until my board comes in. I guess it's off to ASUS' site! Ugh.
 
I always asus uk which seems ok to me,and use global download link for files.i have had over 500kb/sec downloading files from the global links.

Also,you can get intel p45 chipset drivers from the intel website.
 
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