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Best sandy bridge board

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ennogs

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Sep 8, 2009
With price or colour scheme not being an issue what would you say is the best SLI sandy bridge motherboard out?
 
Us run-of-the-mill users have nothing on which to base an opinion. Review sites might have had boards to test but I'll wait for more users to weigh into the discussion before I think we can trust any answer. Buying a board now is akin to becoming an unpaided debugger for their bios (if you're lucky).

If you must buy one, I would go with one of the major manufacturers.
 
Not many socket 1155 motherboard have been reviewed yet, but of the few I have seen, I've been impressed with the Asus P8P67 series (especially the Deluxe). The Asus Maximus IV is probably one of the best cream of the crop, although too pricey for my blood. I saw eVGA just introduced a board that should be good. ASRock P67 Extreme4 is probably one to avoid as the power phases are a little wimpy and they limit vcore. The ASRock P67 Extreme6 might be ok, but I'll need to see more about it before making a recommendation. Gigabyte has released their line, but I know nothing about them yet.

Asus lineup:
P8P67 ~$160
P8P67 PRO ~$190
P8P67 EVO ~$210
P8P67 Deluxe ~$235
SABERTOOTHP67 ~$219
P8P67 WS SC ~$259
Maximus IV Extreme ~$365
 
I bought the p8p67 deluxe

Its all set up ready to go.. Just waiting for the CPU

I have been doing a lot of research these past 2 months.

I would recommended the asus p8p67 deluxe.. it has 16 + 2 power phases, but you wont need that many. its good for overclocking though.

ewiz has the p8p67 models on sale right now. fast shipping. was going to go with the egg, but they dont stock them yet and i got antsy
 
I bought the p8p67 deluxe

Its all set up ready to go.. Just waiting for the CPU

I have been doing a lot of research these past 2 months.

I would recommended the asus p8p67 deluxe.. it has 16 + 2 power phases, but you wont need that many. its good for overclocking though.

ewiz has the p8p67 models on sale right now. fast shipping. was going to go with the egg, but they dont stock them yet and i got antsy

May I ask what memory you got to go with it? I am lokking for 2 4GB sticks.
 
There's multiple variants of the chipset right? Anyone have the breakdown or a link for it handy? Like for me, I won't pay a premium for SLI/Crossfire if I don't have to.
 
Here is a chart showing the differences in features for the Asus P8P67 series:

asus_p8p67_spec.jpg

The plain version of the P8P67 at $160 is a good deal if you don't need all the extras.
 
Guru3D review of MSI P67-GD65

They seemed to like it.

I was trying to figure out the difference between the MSI GD53, GD55 and GD65.

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD53.html
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD55.html
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD65.html

They all look like the same board to me, with the 55 adding firewire and the 65 adding some extra sata ports and a mosfet heatsink with a heat pipe.

So...if I don't need that extra stuff is the heat pipe really that important? Really tempted to get the GD53.
 
As long as you have decent case ventilation (like a side fan), the heat pipe stuff on the chipset is not a big deal.
 
May I ask what memory you got to go with it? I am lokking for 2 4GB sticks.

i was going with 4x2gb 1866 ocz but i cancelled that order since I dont want to deal with 4 ram stick problems.

The ram I bought was http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=g.skill_8gb_2000-_-20-231-407-_-Product

The whole ripjaw x thing is a marketing gimmick, its the same ram chips in the end. And I can manually adjust the cas latency and other latency settings myself.

the plan is to underclock these to 1866 and try for cas 8 (maybe 7 if im REALLY lucky!) at 1.65v

heres to hoping :beer:
 
i was going with 4x2gb 1866 ocz but i cancelled that order since I dont want to deal with 4 ram stick problems.

The ram I bought was http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=g.skill_8gb_2000-_-20-231-407-_-Product

The whole ripjaw x thing is a marketing gimmick, its the same ram chips in the end. And I can manually adjust the cas latency and other latency settings myself.

the plan is to underclock these to 1866 and try for cas 8 (maybe 7 if im REALLY lucky!) at 1.65v

heres to hoping :beer:
OTOH 4 sticks could be moved over to a future quad channel 2011 system. I most likely would also get the two 4GB sticks but get two more when the LGA2011 system build time comes around.

G.SKILL Ripjaws (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1066
 
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i've been looking around myself, though i havent done a great deal of reading. A friend of mine got the asus p8p67 deluxe, and im considering the gigabyte GA-P67-UD7 since i have 2 5870's and prefer the 2 16x slots.

My friend is still tinkering away, he got the 2600k and is tweaking the final adjustments on a 5GHz overclock on air. We ran some benchies on the CPU, my rig is in my sig, his being a 5G sandy, and it averages around 25% faster. I didnt get chance to test memory speeds out (tri vs dual) but ill post back when we do some comparatives tomorrow (im GMT).

I would say that if you can get rid of your existing mobo/cpu/mem then its a pretty good deal on the money you redeem from ur old parts. My new setup is gonna cost me around £600 for the mobo/mem/cpu, and selling my existing mobo/mem/cpu to a friend for £300 so.. 50% more money for a 25% speed increase sounds pretty much on par.
 
I bought the MSI P67A-GD65. With the 1.4 bios that shipped with the board I could not get the 2600k over 4.2Ghz. Windows would not start. I upgraded the bios to the 1.74 beta bios and the board has been fine since. I'm running at 4.5Ghz now at 1.335 vcore. I've been lowering the voltage every day to see how low I can go and remain stable.
 
While I'm not claiming it's the "best" available, I'm liking my Asus P8P67 Deluxe so far. Now the OCZ SSD dying in only 2 days and 3 Windows installs are another story.

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