Mainboard suggestions for an i5 please

hey all,

ive decided that in the near future im going to upgrade and i think it will be an i5 750, ( i7 is too pricey here. )

now which mobo that's a decent overclocker and wont break the bank? i looked at couple, evga and gigabyte. in all honesty i have no idea what to get! i think i might want an sli board though so i can throw another 260 in.

i look forward to getting educated

Lots of good ones out there...but I'd go for a P55A-UD4P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128409&cm_re=p55a-_-13-128-409-_-Product

MIAHALLEN said:

Lots of good ones out there...but I'd go for a P55A-UD4P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128409&cm_re=p55a-_-13-128-409-_-Product

Click to expand...

this looks to be the same board.

http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=450201

P55M-UD4 is an awesome board for cheaper, excellent OC'ing and SLI support.

-D

diaz said:

P55M-UD4 is an awesome board for cheaper, excellent OC'ing and SLI support.

-D

Click to expand...

i think this is the one you mean? does it support 2x16 pcie? from what i can tell its only 1x16 pcie and 2x8 pcie? oor am i reading it wrong ...

http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=449554

yes that would be the one burn_ram, i have that board. it has a i7 [email protected] with 1.2v or there abouts. running the cpu on a 200bclk with out any trouble, windows 7 64bit was a pita with the drivers, causing random lock ups no matter what the cpu was at stock or oc'd.

for sli or cf it will be 8x/8x, which is more then enough. rememeber this is PCIE 2.0 not 1.0. a 8x slot in pcie 2.0 means a pcie 1.0 x16 slot. your not going to lose any if any maybe what 5% drop in fps. from what i recall that is off max fps numbers not min. min fps numbers are way more important then max any day of the week in gaming.

i was on a P3 700E@933mhz for about 3-4yrs before switching over to a LGA775 setup.

Evilsizer said:

yes that would be the one burn_ram, i have that board. it has a i7 [email protected] with 1.2v or there abouts. running the cpu on a 200bclk with out any trouble, windows 7 64bit was a pita with the drivers, causing random lock ups no matter what the cpu was at stock or oc'd.

for sli or cf it will be 8x/8x, which is more then enough. rememeber this is PCIE 2.0 not 1.0. a 8x slot in pcie 2.0 means a pcie 1.0 x16 slot. your not going to lose any if any maybe what 5% drop in fps. from what i recall that is off max fps numbers not min. min fps numbers are way more important then max any day of the week in gaming.

i was on a P3 700E@933mhz for about 3-4yrs before switching over to a LGA775 setup.

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thanks for the reply, but i'm confused. you have an i7 860 in the board i linked to? i though all i7's where a different socket than the i5's? anyhow, that board just made it to the top of my list ...

edit: i see now that the 860, and 870 are socket 1156. interesting! are the 1156 i7's the same as socket 1366 i7's?

It is the i7 9xx's that run on 1366 socket, the rest run on socket 1156.

I did a lot of research before getting my Asus board, if You have a need for USB3 or Sata 3 in the future then Asus has a better solution some other Brands.
The p55 chipset is bandwidth limited, so with a Gigabyte board if you use USB3 and/or Sata3 You lose the 2nd PCI x16 slot completely and the first gets throttled to x8.
Asus uses a Hybrid chip to overcome the limitation.

here in AUS only MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte available from local computer stores, so other brands I have no idea, but if usb3 etc matters to You, do some research.

I have had my chip at 4ghz no probs at all, 1,35v will do 4.2 easy I think as well, but I have no need for 4.2ghz so 3.8 will do.