Please help me pick a board for a Q6700

[JHFerry]

I'll admit, I usually have more time to research these things but tomorrow is my bday and my wife is letting me upgrade so I need to move it. I have pretty much picked a Q6700, it could go Q6600 but I think I am sticking with a quad processor.

I am not a gamer
I am a heavy photoshop user
I rip to .flac and encode to .mp3 a lot
I plan to do some video encoding (HD files)


I really dont want to go more than $125 for the board, I have a thermaltake take PSU that has both the 4 pin and (I think( 24 pin connector.

I have 2 Sata drives but my DVD roms are IDE. So are the other 2 Hard drives but I can live without one of them.

Second guessing, maybe going with the Q9300...

No idea what to do with a video card, I dont care about 3d that much, mostly HD playback and buisness apps

Exactly how much of the 4GB DDR2 can a 32 bit system use? I am really lost with all the new chipsets in these boards, I would like one that I would be somewhat easy to OC from the bios. I wont OC more than that but If I can get the Q6700 past 3GHZ, I will be very happy.

Thanks!

[raging bull]

i did this system last fall, and it's solid and super:
P5KdeluxeWiFi/E6750(2.66-NoOC)C2D/2X1G-Mushkin eXtremePerformanceDDR2-1066(PC2-8500)/Two320GB SeagateBarracuda7200.10s/Lite-On20X/Pioneer18X/AsusX1950Pro-256/X-Fi XtremeGamer/Corsair520HX/LianLiA16B/VistaBusiness

but i'm looking at another new system, with ddr3 and an e8400 or e8500....probably with a p5e3 board....but you might look at the p5kc board, because you can use ddr2 right now and then upgrade to ddr3 when the price drops a little....and if your doing a quad (i'm looking at one myself, for video editing), then i think the q9300 or q9450 (with 12MB L2) might be a better bet than a q6xxxx....

[JHFerry]

Just out of curiosity, why not go to a Quad?

[ctal]

Here are a couple of possibilities that are approximately in your price range:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Note that the Gigabyte board does not have a firewire port.

I would not go with a Q9300 on these relatively low price mobos, as its low multiplier is more likely to be a liability than when used on a higher end board. A relatively low priced mobo figures to be relatively limited in its ability to overclock the fsb.

Regards,

-- Al

[TQ]

Originally Posted by JHFerry

Exactly how much of the 4GB DDR2 can a 32 bit system use?

3.25GB...

[JHFerry]

Originally Posted by TQ

3.25GB...

Why not just use 3gb then?

[JHFerry]

Originally Posted by ctal

Here are a couple of possibilities that are approximately in your price range:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Note that the Gigabyte board does not have a firewire port.

I would not go with a Q9300 on these relatively low price mobos, as its low multiplier is more likely to be a liability than when used on a higher end board. A relatively low priced mobo figures to be relatively limited in its ability to overclock the fsb.

Regards,

-- Al

What would constitute a higher end board that the Q9300 would not have a problem with? X38?

You were actually helping me in the other thread. If you were going to move up in MB you would go to the x38 chipset correct? If I OC it, it will only be what I can do with air cooling. I like the Q6600 because people were getting to 3GHZ with air cooling. The Q6700 I would guess would be a bit better than that but Im curious to see what else I could do in a MB for the future.

One thing about boards nowadays, they seem to get very mixes reviews.

If I go Q6700 (1066) thats the type of DDR I get right? If the board supports a higher FSB then I need a CPU that supports a higher FSB as well correct?

[ctal]

All of the cpu's that were discussed in the other thread will overclock very well on air (assuming you use something better than the stock Intel cooler), although the dual cores will go higher, in part because of their lower power dissipation. I'd expect the Q6700 to overclock significantly better than the Q6600, because it is faster to begin with, it has a higher multiplier, and until a couple of days ago it cost $530 and would not have sold if it could not do significantly better than the Q6600.

You can pay considerably more than $125 for a P35 board, which would buy you additional features and perhaps better performance. Yes, the next step up would be the X38. The Gigabyte GA-EX38DQ6 that I used in my recent build has been getting very consistently good reviews, partly I'd imagine because it is one of their second generation X38 boards. A lot of the negative comments you'll see at NewEgg on other boards were probably people who purchased shortly after initial release, before bios's and driver software for various components on the board were mature.

Here's the link to the GA-EX38DQ6, although it appears to be well out of your price range. 91% of the people who left comments gave it the highest possible rating; none of the comparable Asus boards came close to that when I did my research about a month ago:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Regards,
-- Al

[ctal]

Originally Posted by JHFerry

If I go Q6700 (1066) thats the type of DDR I get right? If the board supports a higher FSB then I need a CPU that supports a higher FSB as well correct?

P35 and X38 boards will generally (or perhaps always) work fine with both 1333 and 1066 FSB CPU's. The manufacturer's website will have a cpu compatibility list you can check.

See the manufacturer's website for recommended memory once you have selected a board. Also see my comments in post 22 of this thread:

Inexpensive DDR3 RAM is out

You may find this thread of interest also:

Memory Doesn't Matter!

Regards,
-- Al

[TQ]

Originally Posted by JHFerry

Why not just use 3gb then?

Well, some of the majors actually supply Vista 32bit machines configured that way - with 3GB of memory.
Personally - if it were me and I was using DDR2 - I'd go ahead and get a 4GB (2x2GB) kit 'cause they're so cheap now.
That way if for some reason you decide you want to run Vista64 down the road you'll have a healthy hunk of RAM already installed. Plus, it's just easier to drop in a matched 4GB kit than to match up a 2GB kit with a 1GB kit (for a total of 3GB).

DDR3's come down in price quite a bit over the last few months but it's still much more expensive than DDR2.
If you're using DDR3 and XP32 or Vista32 then it might make sense to go for a 3GB configuration to save a bit of scratch but I see no reason to go through the hassle of learning a new OS unless it's really going to pay off big...that's why if I were to install Vista it would be the 64bit version. If I planned on going with a 32bit OS I'd just as soon stay with XP.

[JHFerry]

Check this one out, missing 2 Sata connections and does not have Pci express 2.0 but again, I am not a gamer.

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Everything else looks the same.

The FSB says 1600. I am still confused about what Ram to buy, do I match the MB or the CPU? Looks like with this board I can move into a new CPU in a couple of years when they come down.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by ctal

Inexpensive DDR3 RAM is out

Shiny.
By May things should be even better, as far as pricing goes.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by JHFerry

The FSB says 1600. I am still confused about what Raom to buy, do I match the MB or the CPU?

Speaking only for myself I'd buy PC312800 (DDR3 1600). Guess the answer would be "the motherboard".

[JHFerry]

Originally Posted by ctal

P35 and X38 boards will generally (or perhaps always) work fine with both 1333 and 1066 FSB CPU's. The manufacturer's website will have a cpu compatibility list you can check.

See the manufacturer's website for recommended memory once you have selected a board. Also see my comments in post 22 of this thread:

Inexpensive DDR3 RAM is out

You may find this thread of interest also:

Memory Doesn't Matter!

Regards,
-- Al

Ok, so you really go by the max the MB will support. THe CPu is a different matter altogether. As long as the CPU will work on the MB then you can go higher speed on the Ram. Makes sense especially for OC.

The only reason I am looking into a better MB is for the future.

[ctal]

Originally Posted by JHFerry

Ok, so you really go by the max the MB will support. THe CPu is a different matter altogether. As long as the CPU will work on the MB then you can go higher speed on the Ram. Makes sense especially for OC.

The only reason I am looking into a better MB is for the future.

No, your first sentence quoted above is not what I meant to convey. I would probably go with DDR2-800 with any of the mobos we have been talking about, and regardless of whether you choose a 1333 or 1066 cpu. Note my reference to FSB:memory ratio in post 22 of the thread I linked to. The mobo will allow you to set the memory clock rate to one of a number of ratios relative to the fsb clock rate (higher or lower, relative to the fsb rate expressed in non-quad pumped terms, i.e., 1333 is 333MHz and 1066 is 266MHz, expressed in non-quad pumped terms). If you overclocked say 25%, your Q6700 would be running at an FSB (non-quad pumped definition) of 266 x 1.25 = 332 MHz. This corresponds to DDR2-664 (332 x 2 due to DDR being "double data rate"). You would then set the memory:fsb ratio in the bios to something like 6:5, resulting in (6/5) * 664 = 796.8, perfectly corresponding to DDR2-800.

I've read some reports of people having problems with DDR2-1066; I'd do some careful research before selecting that speed, and per the "Memory Doesn't Matter" thread that I referenced DDR2-1066 would provide no benefit vs. DDR2-800, because of its longer latency (unless you pay a premium for lower latency), and because memory performance is not all that critical to system performance.

If you were using a 1333FSB cpu, you would set the ratio to something less than 6:5, perhaps 1:1 or somewhat less depending on how much you are able to overclock the cpu.

The Gigabyte board you proposed above looks like a reasonable choice to me, although more people reported problems with it than with the more expensive board that I went with.

Regards,
-- Al