SLI motherboards

[ikix]

I am thinking of getting SLI 9800GTX but im not too sure about the motherboards that are good, i am wanting to overclock my CPU so that is another priority. I have seen some with PCI-E2.0, how is this different to normal PCI-E???

Cheers

[Azza]

PCI-E 2.0 gives better performance and gives the card more power through the slon that PCI-E.

Performance difference between the two is nil to nowt at the moment.


What are CPU are you using Intel or AMD?

[ikix]

intel

[Bugbait]

The 790i based motherboards are getting good reviews at the moment. Most of the 780i ones are twitchy. My personal experience with the Asus P5N-T Deluxe was woeful and the Striker II Formula based on the current BIOS (as of a few weeks ago anyway) isn't a whole lot better. If your pockets are deep enough go for a 790i solution if SLI is a must and suck up the hit for DDR3.

EDIT: Actually, if you don't intend to overclock much then a 780i solution might be okay. The 780i's can also be okay if you don't intend to push the FSB over 400-425Mhz although I struggled to get the P5N-T stable at 400. I've read, although consistently that the eVGA solutions are more stable than the Asus offerings at the moment for 780i.

[Hicks12]

well my asus p5n-d is stable @ 400fsb, sli and pci-e 2.0(not that important yet) and cheaper too, think that works better?

[Bugbait]

well my asus p5n-d is stable @ 400fsb, sli and pci-e 2.0(not that important yet) and cheaper too, think that works better?

If it's stable then yes Probably a good idea to check the Asus forums to see what people think of the latest BIOS's. I can't stress enough, the P5N-T deluxe, even with the 1001 BIOS is absolutely pants. It took a lot of work to get it Orthos stable at stock and wasn't at 3.2GHz (CPU was 2.66 stock) overclock. Although is worked most of the time CNC3 and WoW would still crash on occassion. The Rampage Formula (x48) was simple as pie to get to 4GHz with all other components being the same. I really wanted SLI but didn't have the patience for ASUS to sort out the BIOS issues with the 780i chipset. I tend upgrade every 8-12 months so we'll see what they have next year .