New to pc's...which motherboard to get?

Hi first time building a pc and am stuck on the motherboard.
I know im getting a AMD x4 965 3.4ghz BE and a ATI radeon 5870 gpu then later down the line when i get the benjamens a second 5870 in crossfire.

So budget wise i hoping not go above 100 pounds.

I'm using scan atm but if anyone knows any other sites that you think are better please point them out.

Regards,
Rob.

Are you looking to overclock too? I'd look into the AMD 890FX chipset.... Also, what PSU are you planning on using? You'll want a good one, especially if you plan on running crossfire in the future

blackersabbath said:

Are you looking to overclock too? I'd look into the AMD 890FX chipset.... Also, what PSU are you planning on using? You'll want a good one, especially if you plan on running crossfire in the future

Click to expand...

+1 890FX seems the best option to go for

Cheers just reasearched all motherbords lol and a few more questions .
Some say when Crossfire happens the first card is x16 and 2nd card is x8 some have both x16 even in crossfire.
Also RAM support some say like 1600mhz then in brackets (oc)so does that mean it can fit 1600mhz ram or not lol or does it mean like 1333hz overclocked to 1600?

Cheers again

Concerning the Crossfire 16x/16x vs. 16x/8x it depends on the chipset. If I'm not mistaken, you only get 16/16 with FX chipsets.

Concerning the ram, I think you are correct. The 1600 is by manual overclocking.

On the 890FX chipset, at least mine, you can switch your RAM to 1600 by simply changing the Freq in BIOS

to OCF!

JamesFtw said:

Cheers just reasearched all motherbords lol and a few more questions .
Some say when Crossfire happens the first card is x16 and 2nd card is x8 some have both x16 even in crossfire.
Also RAM support some say like 1600mhz then in brackets (oc)so does that mean it can fit 1600mhz ram or not lol or does it mean like 1333hz overclocked to 1600?

Cheers again

Click to expand...

As trents noted only the FX chipsets, either 790FX or 890FX, will have "true" 2x 16-bit PCIe. That being said (and I'm not video expert) I've read that the 2x 16-bit PCIe makes very little difference in actual game performance. I've seen anywhere from a 2-5% performance gain but that's about it. On the other hand, boards built with those chipsets also tend to have the highest-quality components compared to other chipset boards, so it's definitely not a loss to get one.

The RAM issue is one that's often hard to explain. First off, "technically" neither AMD nor Intel CPU's support DDR3-1600 RAM. Some manufacturer's show this very plainly by using the "(OC)" suffix after all 1600 claims (for legal purposes I'm sure) and others do not use the "(OC)" even though it's technically correct. In reality most boards support DDR3-1600 with a simple change in BIOS settings, as blackersabbath posted. But it's my opinion, and many share it, that DDR3-1600 is only better than DDR3-1333 if you don't give up latency to get there. In other words, DDR3-1333 at CAS 7 is better than DDR3-1600 at CAS 9. DDR3-1600 CAS 7 is obviously better than either of them.

Hope that helps ...

Nice so i shud aim for 790x or 890x and ive read problems about motherboards and people struggle to boot there pc from what i seen in reviews it seems to alot of Asus brand any direction to which brand?like gigabyte
Cheers again

High-end ASUS are fine and Gigabyte is very good, too, and the Biostar 890FX is good ...