Crossfire R600, Intel Board?

[poopboypat]

Hello, I am having some problems thinking of which board to get. This is the equipment I plan on putting in it. I would like to overclock a little, but I will be using air, and it will have a very nice air flow in the case. And sorry im a very big ATI fan.


Mother Board --- ??????
Processor --- Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
CPU Cooler --- tuniq tower
Power Supply --- Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF (560 Watt or 600 Watt, not sure about this one)
Hard Drive --- Western Digital 160GB
Memory 1GB --- G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 800Mhz
Graphics Card --- ATI R600 (2x Eventually in Crossfire)
Keyboard --- Saitek Gamers Keyboard

I’m not sure what board to get, and the real problem lies at the price. Since the R600 is most likely $400+. I need to try and keep the cost of everything else down. In the mean time i will mostlikely put a x850 pro in (cheap). What board out there is about $150 and will give me crossfire good OC and basicly do a good job.

I have been looking at the out of box versions of the ASUS P5B Deluxe from newegg, but does that come with out any of the cables and power connectors? I think i want a board that has all the parts, expesaly since this is my first computer putting together.

[jtjuska]

WELCOME!!!

The P5B deluxe is all that comes to mind at that price point. Otherwise the P5W DH Deluxe would be another one but you would be better off with the P5B I think. I am sure some others will drop in with opinions

~jtjuska

[RangerXLT8]

R600, while achieving very high fSB, is still 8x 8x Crossfire. That said, so is the P5W DH, but it just cannot clock as high fSB wise.

[jtjuska]

I think he was talking about R600 (X2800XTX) not RD600 which is a chipset, could be wrong though

~jtjuska

[poopboypat]

Im talking about the ATI R600 Direct X 10 GPU that isnt out yet.

[jtjuska]

I thought so, in which case my recommendations stand.

~jtjuska

[zebkoolindc]

The second slot of the p5B deluxe is physically 16x, but electrically 4x or 2x.

If you use the pci-e 1x slot the second 16 slot becomes 2x. I thinks this will severely handicap a nextgen card.

Zeb

[MadMatt2600]

thanks this answers my question as well. I'm going with a similar setup only noncrossfire.

[poopboypat]

Are there any Boards out there that is core 2 duo compadable, and has full 16x 16x crossfire compadible? Possibly 800 DDR2 ram?

I keep finding amd boards, but im getting the intell chip... Anyone have any tips?

[Supershanks]

DFI Launches the LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G Motherboard
& DFI LANPARTY UT ICFX3200-T2R/G but

ATI CrossFire graphics cards (each operates at x8 bandwidth).

also DFI makes ATI RD600 board shows Tony @XtremeSystems getting great results.

Believe asus are also coming up with a mobo but have seen nothing.

Point is it seems that even hi-end crossfire is using Physics Rendering Card + 2x8 crossfire rather than 2x16.

luck

[jtjuska]

I am almost positive that only DFI will be making an RD600 motherboard as Intel has been laying some pretty heavy threats to board makers that they won't be backed by intel if they do make an RD600 board. I am glad to see that DFI is going to launch theirs. I will probably buy one just because of that . As for the x8 x8 thing as opposed to x16 x16 I can't imagine that it makes that much of a difference that you simply couldn't live with the x8's. Maybe I just don't see how they could be using up all the bandwidth this soon after launching the first iteration of PCIe. Oh well, thats my .02

~jtjuska

[Supershanks]

Yep had more or less written this product off due to the corporate politics. i'm looking to upgrade around end of Jan & shortlist for mobo is This or Abit IN9 32X-MAX.

As for the x8 x8 thing as opposed to x16 x16 I can't imagine that it makes that much of a difference

Pretty sure your right

luck

Edit: New i'd seen it somewhere

the pci-e 16x slots are no longer needed for crossfire as the coding can be delivered over both slots and then shared over the internal connection (aka sli bridge). the main need for dual 16x was card to card comunication for crossfire.

From DFI Launches the LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G Motherboard - KennyT772 post#5

[poopboypat]

I hate to say this, but looking at benchmarks and how i have limited income, i think I may go with one PCI 16X slot and not crossfire at all. I still want to use ATI, but probibly not in crossfire. But i come with some concernes.

I will be getting a new monitor soon, ether a 19 or 21 inch wide screen. Resolution, ive never had a monitor this large, so what type of things do i need to be concerned about with the GPU? Will i be ok only running 1 card or will i need to crossfire?

Also Im a gamer and dont want to suffer, but i can get buy with lower settings to make it run smoother, as long as it doesnt look like crap.

And last I am planning on a dual boot (or even tripple boot) Will definatly have Win XP then Vista, as well as a Linix Distro. (And if possible to get a mac os on?)

To summerize :

Gameing
Possibly non crossfire (still ATI)
Linix combadibility (possibly Mac os)
19-21 inch monitor

If i go 1 PCI 16x i was looking at this board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128012

[Supershanks]

I'm running a single Ati xt1900 @ 1680x1050 32bit to a Dell 2007WFP(20" Widescreen) I updated to these around October & it's brilliant. I chose the card as it was a beter £/performance than it's nvidiia equivalents & would have the legs to serve my monitor at it's native resolution.. there is no need for crosssfire/sli, i must admit i tend to buy crossfire/sli ready boards more for the additionsl features (extra sata ports) that accomany these boards, rather than the offchance i win the lottery & go sli.

If running single card:-
1) All 975x crossfire ready(2x8) cards will support a single card x16
2) Probably better for ocing(from what i've read ) 965 chipset, boards tend to be cheaper as some are less feature rich & have a single x16 pci-e.
3) I'm triple booting atm on my raid 0 with xpsp2, vista 32 RC2 & vista 64 RC2. Don't think this should really impact your upgrade thinking as any upgrade should be able to support it.

luck