I'm getting my first quad in a few days, now which of these two motherboards should I

I'm getting my first quad in a few days, now which of these two motherboards should I

I have two motherboards, an XFX nForce 780i SLI and an Abit IP35 Pro. I have a Q6700 coming in the mail. So once it arrives, I'll have two processors, an E8400 and that Q6700, which is my first quad btw. Anyhow, I have two 9800GX2s. I was very disappointed with the results from Quad SLI in Vista. I tried benching with the 175.19 driver set as well as the 175.16 driver set. Both benches stunk. Plus, DX10 graphics are not at all as cool as the marketeers said they were. So, I'm sticking with XP and DX9, and I will not be using SLI on the XFX nForce 780i (well since I'll be using one 9800GX2 I guess technically I will be using SLI but u know what I mean). I'll be using the other 9800GX2 on the other build. Anyways, I'm just trying to see which motherboards I should pair up with these two processors. Keep in mind, I'm sticking with DX9 and windows XP.

I'm excited about my first quad. I am going to oc both builds a bit. However, I'm a bit anxious about the Q6700 getting hot, despite G0 Stepping and my Zalman CNPS 9700. I'd be running both setups on air, and both with the Zalman CNPS 9700. So my question is, how should I pair up these processors and motherboards? Or better yet, I'm gonna try and make the Q6700 my main, so I want the best motherboard for this one. In terms of FSB, which board would go higher? Which one would run the Q6700 cooler? I'm trying to go for I have an OCZ 1000 watter, and another OCZ 700 watter for psu's. I did some oc'ing with the E8400 and found that the XFX nForce 780i overclocked a bit better. Also, I'll be running G.Skill 1066mhz ram (2gigs), I also have 2 gigs of Crucial 800mhz ram for the other build.

Any suggestions?

I'm almost certain that the IP35 Pro will clock the quad higher than the 780i, and will do it a hell of a lot easier. That board is actually pretty good with quads, so I stay stick with it. Since you're not using SLI anymore, you won't lose any performance or anything.

On another note, not quite sure how the 780i will clock the E8400, but I'm sure it will be decent enough. It looks like you're running it that way now, right?

Best of luck!

-Collin-

The E8400 clocks well on the XFX nForce 780i. I'm using that Crucial 800mhz ram. I'm able to get 450fsb x 9 multiplier = 4.05Ghz. It passed prime after an hour, no errors. Still wanna run the 24 hr test tho.

But yeah, thought the IP35 Pro would be better. Plus with the G.Skill 1066mhz ram, I should be able to get a high fsb. I'm just worried about cooling the quad on air. Vcore is 45 celsius on idle and 65 celsius on load. However, after an hour of running prime my temps get to 71 celsius.

It took me a while to figure out the oc on the XFX nForce 780i. At first, I would link the ram to the fsb on auto or 1:1. But everytime I'd boot up, it would boot up in safe mode and the fsb changes would have no effect. Found out that I needed to unlink my fsb from the ram, then it worked fine.