One for the mobo gurus.... I do a load of financial modelling & coding so I'm going for 8gb of ram for my new build (vista x64). My problem is that most reviews/threads talk about 4gb or less (understandably), making it hard to find out which boards are stable/good at 8gb. Which board do you recommend for this...... Dual core xeon wolfdale* (already have) 8gb ddr2 (have the 2x2 G SKill 8000 kits) 24/7 stable oc. Aiming for decent but not extreme oc on air (say up to 4ghz?) No crossfire (already have 8800GT) Noob overclocker - but looking to improve. Cost not the biggest issue for the right board. *My main concern is support .... I have an uncommon cpu (long story). I was under the impression that some p35 boards initially had issues with 45nm procs, which have now been sorted by bios releases? I guess they would fix for the most common procs first, meaning my chip might not work?!? So I was leaning towards an x38 simply because there's more chance it will work out-of-the-box ... is this a sensible assumption? Also, I might buy a Q9450 at some point if I have a need for 4 cores with my work. All help appreciated.
The Xeon won't fit in a P35 board unless it is an LGA 775 proc. I think the Xeons use Socket F (LGA 771) so are not compatable. I also think that any Xeon board will require the use of FB-DIMMs. Andy
Doh! Stupid me for not working that out already (thx for pointing that out Andy). Ok, so ignore the bit about the xeon wolfdale and assume I get a Q9450. Which mobo for 8Gb with a decent oc....?
I'm waiting on delivery of a Gigabyte GA-X38-DS5 to overclock my new Q6600 with 8GB ram. But, from what I've heard on the net, any P35/X38/X48 board will overclock well. The X38 and X48 boards are sold as having support for 1600MHz FSB (QDR). Intel specifically re-engineered (read: speed binned selected chips) the X38 as the X48 with official support for 1600MHz. But they are very expensive. P35 is meant to perform well, I'll let you know about the X38 Andy
