LGA775 motherboard options?

[Jimingle10]

Hi all...my nforce 780i works fine but I would really like to upgrade to a DDR3 board without buying new everything.

I see the 790i supports DDR3 but only 8gb

I was wondering if anyone knows of a good board that supports LGA775 (Q9400 chip), DDR3 16gb+, and 2-way SLI.

I don't feel my chip is obsolete yet and dont feel like dumping money on an i7. My graphics cards are older for sure but they still do the trick for the games I play...I will upgrade eventually but the DDR2 memory, SATA II, and usb 2.0 make my current rig feel dated.

 

[sherretz]

16GB+?????

 

[MattNo5ss]

The only LGA775 boards that support SLI are the ones using NVIDIA chipsets. The 790i chipsets support 45nm CPUs and DDR3, but only up to 8GB of RAM like you said.

Really, your next step is a platform change.

 

[EarthDog]

The only LGA775 boards that support SLI are the ones using NVIDIA chipsets. The 790i chipsets support 45nm CPUs and DDR3, but only up to 8GB of RAM like you said.

Really, your next step is a platform change.

Agreed.

Also, are you sure you need 16GB? Are you using 8GB currently? Make sure you are before making this jump.

 

[wagex]

my x38 p45 board supported sli..

now trying to find one on the other hand... a pain.


also there were lots of hacks on how toget sli working on 775.

theres quite a few on ebay, idk if you are gonna be able to find anything new.

 

[MattNo5ss]

Neither P45 nor any of the other Intel chipsets had official SLI support. Like you mentioned, there are/were driver hacks to possibly enable SLI on the old Intel chipsets though.

Honestly, I don't think it's worth the money to invest in another LGA775 board. Just save the cash for a future platform change.

 

[EarthDog]

+1 ^^

It was only the Nvidia chipset boards (650i to 790i) that 'officially' supported SLI. Plenty of hacks as you mentioned and MattNo acknowledged.

 

[wagex]

ok it wasnt officially supported by the p45 chipset but this board had some weird cfx/sli thing that you could dis connect and flip over and it would enable 8x8lanes (instead of 16/0) and it was cfx/sli supported dunno what or how it worked, or if it even worked always just figured it did :\

 

[MattNo5ss]

I had one of those on my old ASUS P5N-E SLI 650i board too. I wonder if ASRock just used the same "switch cards" for both CFX and SLI boards, so they printed "SLI/Xfire" on it

 

[wagex]

probably i always end up with the weird stuff and then look like a dork for posting false information haha.

 

[Jimingle10]

Thanks for all the replies. I didn't realize SLI was a thing of the past. Do I need 16gb ram? Probably not. I was just trying to do a mini-upgrade under $200 if I can source used parts. I am mostly after SATA3 support for my SSD and DDR3 memory. I bought one of those pci cards that gives me sata3 but the speed is hardly better than my sata2 benchmarks.

I really wish the 790i board had sata3.

Anyone want to buy my current rig so I can just jump on the i7 bandwagon? lol

 

[Theocnoob]

Thanks for all the replies. I didn't realize SLI was a thing of the past. Do I need 16gb ram? Probably not. I was just trying to do a mini-upgrade under $200 if I can source used parts. I am mostly after SATA3 support for my SSD and DDR3 memory. I bought one of those pci cards that gives me sata3 but the speed is hardly better than my sata2 benchmarks.

I really wish the 790i board had sata3.

Anyone want to buy my current rig so I can just jump on the i7 bandwagon? lol

SLI is not a thing of the past. You misread. They said it wasn't supported on most chipsets for 775. SLI is very much a real thing today and now.

If you want to sell your stuff go to the classifieds section or try Kijiji or Craigslist or Ebay.

 

[funsoul]

HyperSLI works fine (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153046)