First time builder looking for input

[fstroupe]

I've had no issues whatsoever with my P5K Deluxe/Q6600.

[Athildja-x64]

Sorry Fstroupe,
Meant to say there should not be any issues with it.
I have edited the post.
Although I have heard that if your board is made in China Vs Taiwan you will not get as good a board, but those same pople wear tin foil on their heads and claim that the sky is falling. ;)

[fstroupe]

Originally Posted by Athildja-x64

Sorry Fstroupe,
Meant to say there should not be any issues with it.
I have edited the post.
Although I have heard that if your board is made in China Vs Taiwan you will not get as good a board, but those same pople wear tin foil on their heads and claim that the sky is falling. ;)

Well, I don't doubt that quality control is better in Taiwanese plants than mainland China plants, but you're gonna find duds wherever they were made.

I had no problems understanding your original post, just commenting that I've had no issues, felt it was relevant since I have the mobo and one of the CPUs in question. Definitely want the 404 BIOS (latest one), though.

[Athildja-x64]

TBH, the only thing I have heard is that some people have a hard time overclocking due to memory issues.
I do not own that board and have not worked with it so I cannot say from personal experience. I do know that the Intel Chipsets work significantly better than anything else when it comes to the Quads, I would stick with one of them

[fstroupe]

Though memory issues with overclocking are possible with any board, I do feel that my PC2-6400 memory is holding me back from some significant overclocks. Some boards are more memory sensitive than others. Having said that, I have met my own personal overclocking goals with the memory. My own personal inexperience may also have much to do with it, this is the first Intel processor I have ever tried to overclock, and the first Asus board I have owned.

I have seen one review where they got 550 FSB. Some pretty incredible overclocks here.

The 404 BIOS adds more possible overclocking tweaks than I have ever seen before. Those are touched on in the above review. They were very impressed with it.

[Athildja-x64]

Yeah, I think they did to the P5K what they did to the old A8R32-MVP boards they had some memory timing issues between the banks and had to force skews into the BIOS to imporve stability. I know when I first got one of those I could not even get it stable at stock but after they updated the BIOS I was able to get some very good numbers.
Could be something along the same lines but only showing at the higher clocks.

[Capper]

Originally Posted by Athildja-x64

I would avoid any of the 680i boards and a quad. I have two (including the one you mention above) and niether work properly with the QX6850 or the QX6800. The eVGA is also picky on RAM.
If you are seriously considering going with a Quad I would stick with an Intel based chipset, you are going to run into less problems than with nVidia's broke one.

Also the X38 chipset has some problems with speedstep on the quads you could wait for the X48 but that is not due out until January next year.

All that having been said I would look at either the Asus P35 or the Gigabyte P35 boards.

On the 64 bit note. Vista x64 has driver signing requirements that tend to get in the way of many 3rd party and freeware applications.
There are ways around it but it is something to be prepared for if you are considering going that route.

Sorry, I just realized that I missed 6 pages worth of posts..
If this information has been given before I apologize.

Sean

I'd like to elaborate on some really good points Sean brings up.

1. The 680i boards have issues with RAM because of overly aggressive secondary timings, in conjunction with voltage fluctuation at and over 2.2V. I've encountered this first hand with memory testing (which will be a bulk of our reviews next week), I've achieved some incredible overclocking results with several PC2-8500 kits, but unless you are going add some active cooling, the memory is not going to last long.

2. INTEL's P35 boards are an outstanding option, I strongly recommend Gigabyte boards, but if you like to blow money, the ASUS boards are not a bad option. The p35 is a good value, plain and simple.

As to the X38, they are good boards, how good? Shortly Paul will be reviewing Gigabyte's X38-DQ6 and I'll be covering the ASUS X38 P5E3 Deluxe. Sean mentions the Speedstep issue, I'm holding out hope that a BIOS update will fix the issue.

I'm a big advocate of the INTEL chipsets, they are always top quality.

[Athildja-x64]

There also seems to be a very serious issue with the Qaud Core systems, I am not sure if this is memory related or not but I have run two different quads on my 680i boards and with different types of RAM I still have stability and booting issues.

[Elysium]

From what I have gathered around the web about X38, it seems like it's just a P35 chipset, but with dual 16x lanes for GPU's. The only reason I see getting a X38 board over a P35 board is if you were going to run Crossfire.

I've also read that the upcoming X48 chipset is nothing more than a X38 chipset, but with native 1600QDR (400FSB) support.

If I were to buy right now, I personally would get a good P35 board, simply because of the mature BIOS's. The way I see it, X38 is still in it's infancy and many motherboard makers have yet to straighten out all the kinks in the BIOS. On the other hand, the X38 is designed to be the enthusiast chipset while the P35 is supposed to be the more mainstream part, but I honestly think that right now the P35 is the better chipset.

[Athildja-x64]

the X38 has PCIe2.0 that is what allows for the dual x16 lanes.
X48 is the X38 with some of the bugs in the X38 fixed. that is why it is being released so soon after the X38.