LSI, PCI express ????? confused

[JRO7563]

hi,

in a recent post, i mentioned how i am intending to put together a pc mainly for 3D rendering and model building, and some gaming. i based it on the intel core 2 extreme X6800 CPU and an ATI radeon X1950.
im now looking at the GeForce 7950 Gx2 graphics card by asus instead, problem is, im a bit confused as to what type of motherboard i need, should it be an SLI or plain PCI-express type for the above graphics card ?????????
ill still be going with the above CPU.
i wont be overclocking anything.
can someone sugest a couple of suitable boards please for the above ?????

many thanks

[abeacock]

A plain PCI-express board is all you need, an SLI board gives you two 16xPCIe slots and is required if you want to plug two physical gfx cards in. The 7950 is two cards in one and so only plugs into one 16xPCI-Express slot.

It depends on how much you want to spend on the motherboard but I have a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 for my E6300 and I'm very pleased with it. It doesn't have firewire though...

The Asus P5W DH is also very good for Core 2 Duos.

[JRO7563]

thanks for the reply and your help on this abeacock. thats cleared that up for me thanks

[abeacock]

For a little more clarity on the subject read this review from CustomPC (great mag!) regarding the BFG 7950 GX2, interesting part is:

"the GeForce 7950 GX2 is effectively two underclocked 7900 GTXs for just £400, offering a high-end SLI setup even if you don't have an SLI-capable motherboard."

http://www.custompc.co.uk/custompc/r...-7950-gx2.html