Differences between two motherboards?

[Katar]

Okay at the moment I am still waiting for P45 motherboards to be released. I am starting to get impatient and was looking at X48 boards (especially as the only Gigabyte P45 board on Scan is a top of the range £170 one). Now on Scan they have the DS4 and the DS5 (can't link them as my post count is too low) and the only differences I can find is that the DS5 has 2 more internal SATA ports. Is that really the only difference between them for £15?

[staffsMike]

Seems to be. It would cost you about that to add them in after though so it's fair enough. DS5 has better chipset cooling by the looks of it to.

I'd still get P35 though. Unless you have a specific need for 1600MHz FSB or PCIe 2.0 (which there isn't one yet) I don't see the point.

[Katar]

Well this will probably be a build that will need the motherboard to last for 4+ years. So PCI-E 2 might be an issue in 2-3 years time if I upgrade the Graphics Card.

[atmadden]

Seems to be. It would cost you about that to add them in after though so it's fair enough. DS5 has better chipset cooling by the looks of it to.

I'd still get P35 though. Unless you have a specific need for 1600MHz FSB or PCIe 2.0 (which there isn't one yet) I don't see the point.

I agree I have been looking at lots of boards lately and can't justify the extra cost of some of these x48 boards. Also looking at some early reviews of the P45 they overclock less and only offer very minor advantages. I have a MSI P35 Neo2 board and it is very good for the price (£67) and a great overclocker well over 500fsb on a dualcore and has crossfire. The abit ip35 pro is a great board as well gtl voltage adjustments for high quadcore fsb. That is the only drawback for my MSI board as it tops out at 470 on a quad.

[Noxvayl]

Okay at the moment I am still waiting for P45 motherboards to be released. I am starting to get impatient and was looking at X48 boards (especially as the only Gigabyte P45 board on Scan is a top of the range £170 one). Now on Scan they have the DS4 and the DS5 (can't link them as my post count is too low) and the only differences I can find is that the DS5 has 2 more internal SATA ports. Is that really the only difference between them for £15?

You would also find there is a slight difference with the capacitor count which effects the boards performance with memory. I have a GA-X38-DS5 and its basically the same as the GA-X38-DQ6 bar one Gigabit ethernet port and the capacitor count which makes my board marginally slower in synthetic benchmarks. Tbh I'm happy with the choice, the difference isn't really noticeable and probably in real world apps its pretty much the same compared to the synthetic benchmarks which can often exaggerate differences.

[MSIC]

I'd buy the cheaper '35 series myself.
PCI-Express 2.0 seems mostly to be about extra lanes, if i remember rightly the '45 series allows more bandwidth in dual graphics card situations.
I also can't remember if 2.0 allows more power to be given via the PCI connectors or not (sorry - not very helpful today ).

For the price difference, i'd get the cheaper one and put the difference towards something like this for more USB ports + firewire too.

Gigabyte P35-DS4 board on scan for £103.
The only Gigabyte DS5 board i can find is the X48 chipset one, at £156 - is that the one?
Personally, i find £100 the maximum i'm prepared to pay for a motherboard and prefer the £65 to £85 range.
What features in particular do you want, or is it just general quality & futureproofing?

[Katar]

Gigabyte P35-DS4 board on scan for £103.
The only Gigabyte DS5 board i can find is the X48 chipset one, at £156 - is that the one?
Personally, i find £100 the maximum i'm prepared to pay for a motherboard and prefer the £65 to £85 range.
What features in particular do you want, or is it just general quality & futureproofing?

I was actually comparing the £139 X48-DS4 to the X48-DS5 you linked you. I want a future proof board that allows some reasonable overclocking, as income wise I am not sure when I will be able to afford a new full build after this one. So a board that will last 4+ years would be nice, that's why i'm looking at PCI-E 2.0 boards. Good quality is obviously essential, i'd prefer to avoid ASUS as I have had a few problems with them the last few years. Features that are essential are decent on board sound that's about it. CPU I am looking to use is the Q9450.

I'm actually going to wait for the new GTX280 and ATI 4850 to be released before I buy I board. I'm going to get either of those cards just hoping they will reduce 8800 prices by another £10-£20. Also Scan don't have to case I want in stock atm. That's why I was thinking of a P45 board as they should be out by the time I order.

[Agent]

Well this will probably be a build that will need the motherboard to last for 4+ years. So PCI-E 2 might be an issue in 2-3 years time if I upgrade the Graphics Card.

If you upgrade the graphics card in 2/3 years time, you're going to be bottlenecked by the processor most likely, even with the fastest the board can support.
A LOT changes in 4 years.

Another vote to go with the P35. You simply can not future proof anything for 4 years.

[Katar]

Looks like I will go for a P35 then. I've actually had my current board for 4 years now and I would slap in an AMD dual core to give it a bit more life but it's AGP unfortunately. So Gigabyte P35-DS4, Gigabyte P35-DQ6 or a Abit P35 Pro XE? Not really sure what makes a good motherboard, one thing I am worried about is will the heatsinks on those boards allow a Xigamtek HDT-S1283 to be orientated to blow air towards the rear of the case rather then up?

Still going to wait two weeks to see the new Nvidia and ATI cards before I make a decision . As I actually plan to buy a cheap 8800GT for the build then in 18 months or so buy one of the new cards along with a new monitor if I have the money.

[staffsMike]

I've seen the xigmatec on the IP-35 dark raider pointing in the correct direction and will work on the PRO and PRO XE for sure.

[Noxvayl]

The heatsinks on the Gigabyte are perfectly fine, I have the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme on my X38-DS5 with loads of space. The P35 boards heatsink is similar to mine(in height) so I can safely say it would work. Although there is nothing wrong with the Abit board I just prefer Gigabyte personally