Intel Core 2 Duo Motheboards ???

[EtheAv8r]

Well it seems pretty clear to me that my next PC build will feature either Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or Intel Core 2 Duo E6700.

Bye bye AMD - I will still have your CPUs in my childrens PCs, but my next CPU is intel. Seems difficult to believe.

Real question mark is on the Motherboard, is there a motherboard that is worth shelling out for now???? Would it be a waste as there will be much better available 'round the corner'? I feel I will have to wait a few months and will be looking at a winter - or even a Christmas build?

What are the concensus thoughts on Intel Core 2 Duo Motherboards???

[Ozymandias]

The Gigabyte 965 based motheboards (DS3, DS4) ~£100 seem to be well respected (offering good overclocking potential) and cheaper than the 975 based boards ~£150

[EtheAv8r]

From what I can find out, the ASUS P5B Deluxe looks to be the best choice if you only want to run a single graphic card (no Crossfire support) at about £120.

Intel's D975XBX looks OK, but is not as quick as the ASUS and costs £160

[owen1978]

Give it to the end of august to get a clearer picture of mobo's, if ur gunning for the E6600 u should be aiming for 3.6ghz, so ur looking for boards that can do 400fsb easily.

Yes the DS3 can reach high speeds but it seems to reach them with the 2mb cache allendales so far.

I got me i on;

MSI P965 Neo Platinum, it needs a bios release so it can go over 400fsb
Abit AB9 (non pro) - this needs a new bios too

[Ozymandias]

From what I can find out, the ASUS P5B Deluxe looks to be the best choice if you only want to run a single graphic card (no Crossfire support) at about £120.

I think it's the P5B that is £120 - the P5B Deluxe seems to be about £160

[Hidden Hippo]

The Gigabyte DS3/DS4 board is fairly good. Over on another forum, there is a person who has overclocked an OEM E6300 with stock cooling and voltage to about 3GHz (stock is 1.83GHz). However, as to the difference between the boards, I don't really understand. The DS3 has 1 PCIe slot and the DS4 has 2 and also has dual BIOS. However, the second slot appears to be wasted as it doesn't support Crossfire or SLi. I personally will be going for the DS3, as I won't go crossfire/SLi and I doubt I'll manage to corrupt the BIOS in order to utilise the dual BIOS feature of the DS4.

[Ozymandias]

The Gigabyte DS3/DS4 board is fairly good. Over on another forum, there is a person who has overclocked an OEM E6300 with stock cooling and voltage to about 3GHz (stock is 1.83GHz). However, as to the difference between the boards, I don't really understand. The DS3 has 1 PCIe slot and the DS4 has 2 and also has dual BIOS. However, the second slot appears to be wasted as it doesn't support Crossfire or SLi. I personally will be going for the DS3, as I won't go crossfire/SLi and I doubt I'll manage to corrupt the BIOS in order to utilise the dual BIOS feature of the DS4.

The DS4 also looks to have better (looking) chipset cooling with that copper heatpipe.

[probedb]

I'm waiting till next year as hopefully there'll be a lot more around and also supply of the processor should be good too

[Ozymandias]

I'm waiting till next year as hopefully there'll be a lot more around and also supply of the processor should be good too

You'll want a quad core Kentsfield by then

[ExceededGoku]

I'm waiting for RD600 for the 3 PCI-E slots, I hope to havea mix and match of X1900XT-X, X2800XT-X, and X2900XT-X lool. That should be interesting, 3 different screens 3 different games at once anybody? Crossfire disabled obviously

[Will]

[QUOTE=owen1978]Give it to the end of august to get a clearer picture of mobo's, if ur gunning for the E6600 u should be aiming for 3.6ghz, so ur looking for boards that can do 400fsb easily.

Yes the DS3 can reach high speeds but it seems to reach them with the 2mb cache allendales so far.


Agreed. I would recommend saving the money on the e6600 and going for the e6300 (which is hitting 3.5ghz on this board). Perhaps investing in fast ram would be a good idea due to the lack of low dividers on this board

[charleski]

If you can wait, then a board with an ATI RD600 or nVidia 590 chipset might be a better idea than the limited offerings we have from Intel so far. It's hard to say for sure until there are retail boards out which can be properly tested.

If you're just using the machine for gaming then an OCd 6300 will be very good. But you'd find the extra cache of the 6600 makes a difference when encoding or doing content creation.

[ExceededGoku]

RD600 is gunna be late...

[Couger]

After looking around ive decided to wait for more choice of conroe motherboards to hit the market

[piranha]

Have read that so many of these new boards still require BIOS flashes etc to be able to see a Conroe chip; surely knowing that the cpu releases was iminent they could have included support for them.

[Ben_]

so what does the man who doesnt want to wait longer than tommorow do ?