Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Harrison

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Dec 1, 2007
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West Sussex
Hi everyone,

As many of you are into PC system building I was wondering what current motherboards you would recommend for a Core 2 Duo CPU? The Q6600 to be exact. I normally keep up to speed with motherboards, but haven't built a standard PC for about a year; and there seem to be a lot of socket 775 motherboards around at the moment to have to look though.

I'm currently very interested in the Asus P5Q Deluxe, or the less expensive Asus P5Q Pro. Which out of those two is recommended? The Deluxe is £50 more than the Pro and doesn't really offer that much more for the money. It does have better audio, but the system would be using an XFI sound card so that doesn't matter. It has dual bios recovery, but the Pro can be recovered from a memory stick, and it does have 16 phase power management compared to 8 phase. But other than that I can't see all that much difference for the price. Only issue I can see with these two boards is that the two PCI slots get covered if you use a dual height graphics card. But I'm only intending to stick a single ATI 4870 in the system anyway.

Any other makes and models to recommend? I'm thinking around the £100 price range for the motherboard. Less is obviously better as more could then be spent on other parts.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Hi H,

If you want the Best for your Q6600, get the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P Intel P45 Mobo. This uses the cheaper DDR2 Ram rather than DDR3 & runs on the Intel P45 Chipset. Raid STRIPE on the Intel Matrix controller is blisteringly fast.
This Mobo will push your Quad CPU further than any other board on the Market. It has a whole 2oz of Copper in & around the CPU & Voltage Regulators which helps this board acheive some very big over clocks via fast & stable FSB's. No other board will get the best from your Quad, but be sure you have the wallop in your PSU. Get the Coolermaster V8 heatsink too. OCUK have them on this "This Week Only" with *cough* seven quid off the rrp.

Don't think you'll like the prices of either the above, but believe me, what a combination! 8)

As a matter of interest, is it the Energy Efficient version of the Q6600 you have?
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Yep, it's the Q6600 GO version. ;)

Thanks for the mobo recommendation. I will take a look. I've tended to stick with Asus boards for the past couple of years. I used to buy MSI boards because they were always good value for what you got, but my opinion of their boards changed after two different MSI MoBo's died in different ways.

For the heatsink I was considering the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro. Would you say that is OK for a reasonably priced one? Has a lot of great reviews.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

I actually use an ASUS P5Q (plain, no deluxe, no pro, costs 118eur) it is this one:

PER.522630.jpg


Chipset: Intel P45 / ICH10R
FSB: 1600/1333/1066/800MHz
1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
4 x DDR2 1200/1066/800/667
Southbridge: 6 x Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)
Marvell 88SE6111: 1 x Ultra DMA 133/100/66
Silicon Image Sil5723: 2 x Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s (Drive Xpert Technology)
onboard PCIe Gb LAN controller.
onboard Realtek ALC1200 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC.
onboard LSI L-FW3227 controller.
features: EPU-Six Engine, 8-phase power design, Express Gate, Drive Xpert, Fan Xpert, ASUS fanless design-heatpipe solution, AI Nap, Q-shield, Q-connector, ASUS O.C. profile, CrashFree BIOS3, ASUS EZ Flash2, Precision Tweaker 2, ASUS C.P.R.

I am very very pleased with the motherboard, and highly recommend it to anyone! I use it with a C2D E8500 (45nm, 3,16ghz) and the thing really flies!
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Might be a better idea, that P5Q, since using only one GPU anyways, and might be more use for the one extra pci, than unused PCI-e. I still have my good old stable P5B mobo in use, haven't yet had any good reasons to upgrade it, having the same C2D E8500 processor as Keropi.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

A lot of people have been saying how great the ASUS P5Q range of motherboards are and looking through the specs they do look good.

And as mentioned above, I've been using Asus boards for the last few of years and really like them. They always look and feel really well made, and include a ton of extras. And they are normally loaded with lots of features.

My current main system has an Asus A8N-SLI Premium with an AMD64 4000+ CPU and has been great. However I've decided it is finally time to move to a multi-core setup. My current CPU still seems to be able to cope with all current games without any problems. Even games some have said need a quad core CPU still run perfectly well. However this year I know most games will be optimised for multi core processors so I know it is going to start struggling, and as I also now own a Samsung T240HD monitor I want to be able to get the most out of the 1920x1200 resolution. :) And I also want to take advantage of the larger memory allowed from a 64-bit OS, so this new system will allow me to have 8GB of ram for video work.

Does anyone here use Crossfire to link two ATI graphics cards together? And if so, how does it compare to nVidia SLI?

I'm considering running either 2x 4870's or one 4870x2. Not just for gaming, but so I can run 4 monitors at once. Obviously if I opted for the single 4870x2 I would then still only need a single PCI-E slot.

Also does anyone know what the new technology is to daisy chain monitors together from a single output? I rememeber reading about it recently but can't remember the name. I think it is similar to HDMI.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

I always find benchmark results only tell half the story. Real world use is just as important.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

How true, while still giving at least some sort of clue.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

That is true. It is really the only way to try and directly compare different models and ranges of hardware side by side, with any hope of seeing how they do perform side by side. And with graphics cards you do have the slightly more accurate real world tests of in game FPS scores.

In contrast I never trust the artificial scores from programs like 3DMark because they just don't really represent anything real. Great fun to watch the demos playing through for the tests though, and it does show you how much better your new card is compared to your last which probably struggled in the same tests.
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

LOL H. It's not funny spending £600+ on one Graphics card to see a few fps more in 3DMark! :LOL:

Anyways, the Artic Freezer Pro is about 7 DegC hotter under full load than the CoolerMaster V8. That's quite a lot! :shock:

Hope you get a good overclock from yours. I can get to the Desktop @ 4Ghz (450fsb) but not stable enuff to do anything. Had to settle for 3870Ghz in the end, but thats a massive 62% Over Clock! 8)

Everest%20CacheMem.png


Good luck m8y. :D
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Kin Hell said:
LOL H. It's not funny spending £600+ on one Graphics card to see a few fps more in 3DMark! :LOL:

:LOL: I think anyone is mad to spend such amounts of month on a graphics card full stop. They date so quickly it just isn't worth it in my view. I instead normally opt for a model one below the current top of the range, and find that keeps me going for at least the next two to three years before I have to upgrade again to play the latest games at their best.

I know some have to have the fastest and best currently available, and hate to play games if they can't run them at their maximum settings with insane framerates. I'm not one of those people though. As long as games run at a resolution that makes them look nice and the framerates are fast enough to play smoothly them I'm happy.

Anyways, the Artic Freezer Pro is about 7 DegC hotter under full load than the CoolerMaster V8. That's quite a lot! :shock:

I'm not intending to overclock the Q6600 to its max. I will give it some testing to see what its limit is, but then do some temperature tests and find a happy medium. The stock speed of the processor is pretty good as it is after all, and everyone seems to get them running easily close 3GHz on stock cooling, so I would be happy with a bit over 3GHz using an Arctic Freezer or similar. Although the speed you achieved is very impressive, the CoolerMaster V8 is quite a monster, and a quite extreme and huge! I bet it doesn't fit some motherboards or cases! :LOL:
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Thanks for the info Adonay. Great to see some system specs.

What do you think of the 4870 x2? Is it worth the money? Or is a standard 4870 OK for most things?

And what size and make of PSU are you using?
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

I think the 4870x2 is a waste of time unless you run everything at 1920x1200 or higher with AA maxed etc. My brother has a 4850 card and it does seem to play the same games with great graphics only on a lower res 1280x768.. I would buy a 4870 or Gtx260 now and wait for the next high end cards to come or these to drop in prices ---- I run Corsair 750watt psu . For me the X2 was great since i have a big screen if i did not have that i would have gone for a 4870 1gb version they are great...
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

I got at xmas the new 45nm GTX260 from GigaByte... works and scores AWESOME. My friendly advice is: DON'T BOTHER WITH ATI. NEVER. they can make speedy stuff, but sooner or later nVidia releases better drivers that outperform their cards (the 4870 used to be king, now even the new GTX260 beats it in 80% of the time) plus ATI drivers are... questionable at least in terms of reliability...
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

I do agree that most of the time nVidia drivers are better and slightly more stable. However I have owned many ATI cards in the past and the drivers have been fine.

As for the 4870 vs the 260 GTX. For £100 less, the 4870 is the much better deal in my view. It can match the 260 GTX to within a couple of frames in most tests, and in most resolutions. And it even pulls ahead in some games.

There is a great review of the 4870 at http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd ... ew--asus/1 which tests and compares it against the 9800 GTX+, 4850 and the 260 GTX in many games, with each at 4 different high resolutions, and all games set to maximum settings, with the 4870 returning some impressive results.

I will be running most games at 1920x1200 if possible, because my new monitor has this native resolution, and from the tests in that review it looks like the 4870 will be able to cope with good playable framerates at that resolution.

So I think I will be getting a 4870. Final question though. Is it worth getting one with 1024MB ram? Or just getting the cheaper 512MB version?
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

remember Harrison, the 4870 was to rival the GTX280 , not the 260...
see this updated review here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte- ... mb-review/
it convinced me to get this card :mrgreen:
there are games that ati is better or nvidia... there are also games that the 260 is par with the 4870... BUT
I see now that their prices are almost the same, so either choise is fine...

PS. get the 1GB version...
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

Is your card the newer GTX 260 core 216? If so then that is really a 280 with a few bits disabled, and they definitely do perform better then the original card.

If money was no object then I would love the new GTX 295. And imagine two of those in SLI!
 
Re: Motherboard recommendations for a Q6600 needed

yes, my card is the new 216core GTX260, the same as the review I mention above :p
the 295 is a sweet card... but expensive! :evil:
 
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