What motherboard are you getting for your PRECIOUS (Conroe of course)

What motherboard will you choose for your new Core 2 Duo chip?

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belmicah

Gawd
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Oct 10, 2005
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Title says it all guys. What motherboard do you plan on getting or have already gotten to run your new Conroe chip? I think that the chipsets, board layout, and BIOS options are going to be most important for enthusiasts. I personally will probably go with the Gigabyte. It has good capacitors, a slew of power mosfets, new unique cooling designs, and a great overall layout. Tell me what you guys think.
 
I'm waiting a little while longer for the mysterious 985. I know, I know. If that fails, I'm waiting for clarification on the Conroe/Kentsfield mobo issue, then I'll decide.
 
Hoping for a good mATX board with the 965 chipset, but if not, I will probably mod my X-Qpack to use ATX boards and see what's the best :D!
 
the DFI is priced too steap, the abit is so so...
the Gigabyte seems to offer the most features here.
 
No love for the P5B? Is there really that big of a difference between 965/975 performance?
 
belmicah said:
Title says it all guys. What motherboard do you plan on getting or have already gotten to run your new Conroe chip? I think that the chipsets, board layout, and BIOS options are going to be most important for enthusiasts. I personally will probably go with the Gigabyte. It has good capcitors, a slew of power mosfets, new unique cooling designs, and a great layout. Tell me what you guys think.
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965 is out, because of no PATA support. nForce is a nonstarter because I'm going ATI for graphics. That leaves Intel and ATI chipsets. ATI's Core 2 Duo chiupset hasn't shipped yet, which leaves Intel's 975XE. The best bang-for-the-buck (if you don't OC) is the D975XBX *BadAxe*, especially if you like CF.
 
Got everything .. just waiting on C2D ..

dh1205ve.gif
 
PGHammer said:
965 is out, because of no PATA support. nForce is a nonstarter because I'm going ATI for graphics. That leaves Intel and ATI chipsets. ATI's Core 2 Duo chiupset hasn't shipped yet, which leaves Intel's 975XE. The best bang-for-the-buck (if you don't OC) is the D975XBX *BadAxe*, especially if you like CF.
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Yeah, I had originally put this motherboard on the list, but I thought I saw that it needed to be modded to lower the voltages to support Conroe chips. Do you guys know what this was all about?
 
I'm not getting Conroe ATM. I always like to stay about a year behind the curve. That way, when I do buy, the smoke has settled, hardware/software issues have been resolved, and the prices are far cheaper.

Case in point, I just bought a P_D 920.
 
SO far the P5W DH is looking good but I am still undecided. A buddy of mine ahs tested intel XBX, P5W DH and later this week or next the abit. The DFI seems to have probs on fsb and I really dunno much about the P5B but it seems like it will be good. When it comes to the end I really have no clue yet.
 
Im also going to wait on the DFI NF590 Board
I Just hope its not really coming out 2 months from now.
 
I like the redirection of the A-bit company, and have been a long fan of their boards. Minus the fat1aity series of course
 
applejacks said:
Im also going to wait on the DFI NF590 Board
I Just hope its not really coming out 2 months from now.
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The only thing I am worried about the nf590 boards is how well they will scale fsb. Shamino at vr-zone tested the referrence board and got 350 which seems pretty good to me as it probably has very immature drivers and bios so there is hope.
 
belmicah said:
Yeah, I had originally put this motherboard on the list, but I thought I saw that it needed to be modded to lower the voltages to support Conroe chips. Do you guys know what this was all about?
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That applies to revision 303 and earlier boards, and is a VRM issue. Revision 304, which is the one currently being shipped by Intel, does not have this issue and supports Core 2 Duo out of the box.
 
The more I keep seeing, I think the Bad Axe is likely the best option right this second. It supports the 7950 cards, too. You've just got to make sure you're getting the latest revision. I'm getting one through Monarch and they've got to test 'em out to make sure the system runs correctly so I'd assume I'll have no issues.
Looking at all of the various round-ups, it seems like that board and the ASUS are the ones that most reviewers are using.
 
I think the intel badaxe is probably still the best bet a the moment.

Nothing too fancy. Has decent O/C options. Passive cooling, no heat pipes which don't on "upside down" cases. Also, a decent number of PCI-E and PCI slots.

I really don't think P965 is a very good solution for the conroe. The more you look at the benchmarks. The more you realise that current stuff is still mostly CPU limited!!! 965P doesn't support dual video cards. The only way you can push a Core 2 to the MAX today for games is with dual video cards!!!.

The new ASUS P5W DH just looks like a attempt by ASUS to jack the selling price of its boards up by putting more "features into it". By looking at the latest NF-590 from the ASUS R.A.G. series. I wonder what there conroe R.A.G. board will look like? w/ blinking multi colored LED's for that disco effect? I have simular opinions of the newer gigabytes as well, especially that GA- 965P-DQ6 ...It looks like heat pipe thing looks like the spectator stands you get at soccer standiums..
.
 
Personally, I just picked up the Abit AB9 Pro board. $160 with shipping. Seemed like a good price, and Abit has a pretty good record with Intel chipsets and OCing even if it does take a few bios revisions.
 
I can't even make a choice now. [h] said that the Asus P5b does not support the 7950gx2 and that was my first choice of motherboard. Now it looks like I have to wait for someone to confirm which board works out of the box with a 7950gx2. There is no way I'm running a 7950gx2 with only 1 core functioning...
 
My Gigabyte DS3 will be here Monday. :)

A nice big empty 775 socket to look at. :(
 
asus p5w dh deluxe. i got it a couple days ago with an 805d to screw around with while i wait for my 6600. great board. i have used strictly dfi for 3 years, since nf2 infinity. but with the features and performance of this board, i am completely blown away. first time i have had a motherboard that cost 2 1/2 times as much as my cpu, also.
 
I'm gonna wait to get an nForce 590 SLI based board hopefully. Though I would like to get this upgrade done somewhat soon. But it seems like I may be sitting on my hands for a while. I was really hoping I'd have a good computer by the time I went back to school.

These prices are atrociously bad too. I don't feel like paying $250 for a motherboard like some of you do. Jesus. I guess I'll just have to live with my socket 754 2800+ for a while longer, ugh.
 
enelson125 said:
I'm gonna wait to get an nForce 590 SLI based board hopefully. Though I would like to get this upgrade done somewhat soon. But it seems like I may be sitting on my hands for a while. I was really hoping I'd have a good computer by the time I went back to school.

These prices are atrociously bad too. I don't feel like paying $250 for a motherboard like some of you do. Jesus. I guess I'll just have to live with my socket 754 2800+ for a while longer, ugh.
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Me either, I'm used to paying $130 or so maximum for a good AMD motherboard... $250+ for a performance Intel board just seems absurd to me. I'm hoping once the launch is closer and more boards are available, the prices will drop a lot :).
 
I'm still not sure which better P965 motherboard to pick:

These four P965 motherboards:

Abit AB9 Pro
Asus P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4
Intel DP965LT
 
I'll probably start thinking about this in a couple months when prices stabilize and there are plenty of hardware reviews to read. My Opteron 148@FX55 will tide me over until then..
 
Now that Tankguys has the P5W DH dlx with the 701 bios, I'm getting it for my Conroe 6600.
 
check out their website. It specifically list bios 701; conroe ready. I've dealt with TG's before and they are straight-up the best. They don't tell you something that isn't true.
 
fsh42na said:
check out their website. It specifically list bios 701; conroe ready. I've dealt with TG's before and they are straight-up the best. They don't tell you something that isn't true.
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Wait a sec... non 701 BIOS P5W-DH Deluxe boards aren't Conroe-ready? :eek:
 
can't say for certain whether the previous bios (502?) is conroe compatible, but I've heard it is. Therefore, it stands to reason that 701 should be fine with it also. TG's say it is and that's enough for me.
 
Does anyone have information on which boards are using the new thermal control tech with Conroe, and which will be pushing the dummy signal? :confused:
 
enelson125 said:
I'm gonna wait to get an nForce 590 SLI based board hopefully. Though I would like to get this upgrade done somewhat soon. But it seems like I may be sitting on my hands for a while. I was really hoping I'd have a good computer by the time I went back to school.

These prices are atrociously bad too. I don't feel like paying $250 for a motherboard like some of you do. Jesus. I guess I'll just have to live with my socket 754 2800+ for a while longer, ugh.
Click to expand...

remember, the tier 1 nforce 4 sli boards stayed around $200 from early 2005 until am2 came out. dont expect the prices of the mainboards to drop 50% by october. also, dont expect the intel 590/570 boards to be cheap, either.
 
either going for the P5B Deluxe or the P5W DH when I get back from Japan... But I'm not sure about which one until I see which shows a bigger performance hit: the south bridge (ICH7R or the ICH8R) or the chipset (975X or 965)
 
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