Foxconn X38A Opinion

[raibatal]

Hi Guys,

I am planninng to put together a system with Q6600 and Radeon 3870. I did some research on the Mobo and the Foxconn X38A caught my attention.
The major selling point is that this has got support for both DDR2 and DDR3.
Since Foxconn is not a very big player in the Mobo market, I was wondering if anyone has got any experience with them. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Oh I forgot to mention that I am plannning to OC to aroung 3GHz

Thanks is advance

[staffsMike]

They're ok, nothing to write home about as far as I have seen, tending to focus on budget options.

I really don't think there is much need for DDR3 support in these boards as the next time you upgrade (assuming its 2 or 3 years down the line) the intel socket will have changed rendering any board you buy now obselete.

I guess if you were planning on getting a 1600MHz FSB chip and overclocking it heavily then it would be beneficial but otherwise I wouldn't bother and certainly wouldn't base a purchase around it.

[raibatal]

Hmm you do have a point there. Any suggestions on a good motherboard. P35 s look good for overclocking but they are really a abit dated I think. (Not being equipped with a PCI2.0 slot etc.) Do you think an ASUS PE5 would be better than the Foxconn one. It is a few bucks cheaper

[staffsMike]

I would go with the Abit X38, it's a nice board if you actually want an X38.

Since nothing can actually fill the bandwidth PCIe 2.0 can offer yet (PCIe 8x actually gives enough for most of the up to date cards) it's not really anything you need to worry about but more so than DDR3.

If you plan on changing the graphics card during the life of the system then PCIe 2.0 may be worthwhile but it's hard to say if PCIe 8x can still do the job well enough.

I'd personally go with P35 as they are very stable overclockers, there very few problems with them and abit and asus make very nice variants of it

[raibatal]

Thanks for the advice mate. This really helps