Recommend a Motherboard...!

[NovaSphere]

Yo!

I was supposed to buy my new build last week, but after some 'budget' problem and a holiday with my friends I needed to wait a little, so anyway, I changed my build a little to cut the total price a little, but that doesn't hurt my budget that much anymore.

At this moment I have the following;
Asus P5Q PRO
Asus GeForce ENGTX260
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Chipset Boxed
Corsair 4GB Kit, 240pin DIMM, 4-4-4-12, PC2-6400
Western digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA II 7200 16MB
Antec Three Hundred
Corsair HX520W Power Supply
Samsung SyncMaster 2043BW (Black)

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I know about the ATI - Nvidia GPU solutions etc, I know about the ATI 4000 series etc. but I thought it through and I'm sticking with the GTX260 anyway, if you wanna know why feel free to ask ;P

My main concern is (hopefully my last >_<) as already stated in the topic, the motherboard.
Main point is, maybe smarter to get a motherboard that supports SLI with getting a Nvidia card, if I'm sticking to single GPU card in the future, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the P5Q Pro, since I think SLI is slightly a bit waste of money, unless you play on huge resolutions...
But the thing is, maybe it's smarter to already get an nForce motherboard for the future, once the GTX260 has dropped a lot in price I might buy a second one... But I doubt that will happen in the following 2 years.

So my question, wise to buy a nForce mobo for that, or just stick to this?

[staffsMike]

Don't buy nvidia boards. Pretty unstable most of the time and SLi is a waste.. I have one and while it's fine for what I use it for, I should have gone for an intel as I decided SLi wasn't worth it in the end.

[NovaSphere]

Don't buy nvidia boards. Pretty unstable most of the time and SLi is a waste.. I have one and while it's fine for what I use it for, I should have gone for an intel as I decided SLi wasn't worth it in the end.

Seeing that comes from you, glad you somewhat got the same thoughts about it as I do xD

One different side question, I changed my HDD from the 640GB version from WD to the 500GB to cut my total price a bit, as far as I know the only difference between the 2 HDD's is the capacity, that's true or any performance changes?

[staffsMike]

Well the 640GB is one of the fastest drives available right now as it uses 320GB platters. It's a great drive if you can afford the extra but not the end of the world if you can't.

[TAKTAK]

Well the 640GB is one of the fastest drives available right now as it uses 320GB platters. It's a great drive if you can afford the extra but not the end of the world if you can't.

if you reccomend something to test both of them i'll run a test now and tell you the performance difference... (i have a 640 and a 500 AAKs, got a 500AAJs somewhere but it's in a caddy...)

[NovaSphere]

Well the 640GB is one of the fastest drives available right now as it uses 320GB platters. It's a great drive if you can afford the extra but not the end of the world if you can't.

And the 500GB doesn't use 250GB dual platters =P?

[staffsMike]

I assume it does yeah, but pretty sure they get a butt kicking for 320GB based drives.

HDD speed is never that much of a concern to me though so I couldn't quite you figures. HD tune is popular I believe TAK TAK.

[TAKTAK]

WD 500AAKs


WD 640AAKs

[Crevan]

On the SLI mobo issue - I've read somewhere that you can actually use two nvidia gpus on a non-SLI motherboard, as long as they don't perform the same task. For example, you can use your GTX260 as the main graphics card, and then get something like 9600GT for the second slot to do PhysX =)

There were also some rumours floating around that nvidia might drop the driver lock on SLI some time in the future, so that you'll be able to use it on non-nvidia boards. But that's just a rumour, so don't take it seriously for the time being.

Also, P5Q-Pro seems a good choice.