Mobo for e8400 and 8800gt

I ordered the Abit IP35 Pro, but lots of people are reporting problems with the CPU temperature and who knows when Abit will come out with a new BIOS. I'm afraid to set everything up because unless I know what the temps actually are, I don't know that I'm not damaging the CPU or something. I'm not prepared to wait on the new BIOS unless I have an ETA and Abit can't provide one. Many people are also reporting problems with the IP35 Pro supporting PCIe 2.0, which is what my 8800gt is. There is supposedly a fix, but it doesn't seem to work for everybody - I read about that problem on the abit forums.

Is a board that officially supports PCIe 2.0 going to give me significantly faster speeds? Is it worth the extra money?

So I need a board which definitely supports the e8400 and 8800gt with no problems (I don't need out of the box support).

I'd like to stay under $200. I was considering these boards:

Gigabyte ga-p35-ds3l
Gigabyte ga-x38-ds4

Didn't Intel say that p35 boards don't support PCIe 2.0 though?

So would either of these boards work?

I liked the ip35 pro because of the fan controls among other things, but....

So will anybody help a semi-retarded newbie?

pcie 2.0 is backwards compatible with pcie 1.0/1.1. the problem could be a bios with the board or the video card need some kind of update to its bios.

the price increase for X38 when you dont need sli isnt worth it. not to mention PCIE 2.0 isnt going that big or any improvement over pcie 1.0/1.1. after all the card is still 16x speed.

I went with the DS3L in anticipation of something better coming out later. The Ds4 is essentially the same board with some more goodies strapped in.

I'm pretty sure a lot of boards are having trouble with temp readings on the E8400 chips. I know my Asus does. I wouldn't factor that in a whole lot as I don't think you can get any guarantees about it this early on.

Don't worry about the PCI-E 2.0 thing. As long as you have the proper power connectors on your PSU your 8800GT won't starve. For most people PCI-E 2.0 is only a marketing thing at this moment.

With that aside, the Abit board should suit you well. Any of the P35 chipset boards from Abit, Asus, or Gigabyte seem to be doing really well. Specifically the Abit P35 series, Asus P5K series, or DS3 series (not sure about that one) should all work well for you.

swoyekr. said:

I went with the DS3L in anticipation of something better coming out later. The Ds4 is essentially the same board with some more goodies strapped in.

Click to expand...

DS3L = no raid
DS3R = raid
DS4 = raid with extra goodies on top of the DS3R.

I don't think there is a P35 board atm that correctly shows temps on 100% of e8400 CPUs, tons of people with many different boards are all reporting temp problems with the e8400.

I've read about some people's experiences with the e8400 and Gigabyte p35 boards (DS3L particularly) and they have invariably had success - even without the right BIOS (temps and everything were fine). The opposite is true of the abit IP35 Pro so far. I think I might (sadly) return my IP35 Pro and get the DS3L. Yay for restocking fees!

And of course now people are saying that the early 45nm batches were faulty and gave bad temps so I might have to return that as well. I got one from the early (packed 12/27/07) batch from Microcenter. So there may not be a problem with any of these motherboards at all. I don't know if I should return the CPU or the mobo.

your jumping the gun way to fast JT... just give them time to release a "retail" bio for the IP35-pro... if your not one to wait then buying the newest hardware when releases isnt for you..as people that do like reporting bugs and helping make things better... it just doesnt happen at the flick of a switch.. weeding out bugs in bios or uguru takes time and testing,lots of testing...

This is my first time buying really new hardware but I didn't buy it to sit in the box. I would like to be able to report bugs and such but I'm afraid to even hook it up because of the nature of this problem and my inexperience (I've only built one other computer). So I wouldn't mind if there were less significant bugs but I at least want to use this thing for the next month or so until a new BIOS comes out. It goes against my better judgment to take a risk with hardware that is reporting inaccurate temps.

its not hardware reporting the temps it is the software. needs updates to correctly read those signals from the cpu, thats all.

Evilsizer said:

its not hardware reporting the temps it is the software. needs updates to correctly read those signals from the cpu, thats all.

Click to expand...

Right, but my point is that I want this thing up and running and I don't even have an ETA from abit regarding a temp fix. They have released a BIOS today which supposedly fixes some of the voltage problems though. See the abit forums.

Thanks for your help and I'll probably order the DS3L in a couple days unless abit comes up with something.

Who needs temp monitoring when it cashes you knoew you clocked to high

||Console|| said:

Who needs temp monitoring when it cashes you knoew you clocked to high

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No no, when it crashes it needs more volts. When it smokes, you know you clocked too high.

aside from the temp reading issues, i'm loving the IP35-Pro. they say the problem is fixed in the latest beta bios, but i can't confirm since i haven't flashed yet.