Motherboard headache, which to get?

[espeed]

Hello,

Ive been out of the PC building game for close to a year now so im feeling slightly disorientated when it comes choosing a performance/cost effective motherboard for my new system I am building shortly.

Parts i have decided on are:

CPU: E8500
GPU: XFX GTX 260 (x2)
MOBO: ????
RAM: 2 x 2GB of ???? DDR3 or stick with DDR2??

Because of my indecision about the mobo i cant really make a decision about the memory either. I want to go ddr3 memory preferrably but i just dont know enough about the mobo's and they seem quite expensive at the moment.

Perhaps some suggestions from those that have built a high performance machines lately?

Im after affordable/high performance SLI mobo suggestions for both ddr2 and ddr3 setups. Im looking to order my parts in the next few weeks so id like to know about whats available now as apposed to whats coming soon.

Cheers

 

[35g700]

You would be better off with a radeon hd 4870, its cheaper and faster, or if you are paying $600 for two video cards you could just get the 4870X2.

 

[espeed]

my question was about motherboards, not about which graphcs card i should purchase. Please read and understand my question, no offense. I wont even start on how much i hate radeon cards and their shite drivers so ill leave it there.

 

[Nagasama]

there are no good SLI motherboards. they're all made by nvidia
the last decent one (that i owned) was the stellar 590sli. as of right now, and i think most will agree...the SLI mobos are, as you so eloquently put it, shite.
try an x48 or p45 mobo. no SLI, obviously. but with a good card you dont need two.

 

[Gustave5436]

my question was about motherboards, not about which graphcs card i should purchase. Please read and understand my question, no offense. I wont even start on how much i hate radeon cards and their shite drivers so ill leave it there.

AnandTech: AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Testing the Multi-GPU Waters

4870X2 > GTX 260 SLI.

If you did decide to get a 4870X2 instead, you wouldn't need an SLI motherboard and therefore could get P45/X48.

Also you only need DDR3 if you decide to wait for i7.

 

[espeed]

Hey thanks very much for the suggestions, i have been reading up about intels new chipset boards and im really liking the asus P5Q deluxe at this stage.

 

[Nagasama]

good choice.

 

[espeed]

I found this article which is dated May which shows a comparison between the asus P5Q and x48 based chipset which shows the P45 to be lacking in performance. This is almost 4 months old however. Can anyone comment on this in regards to the P5Q's current performance with its current bios?

 

[Nagasama]

lacking in comparison to what? the x48? its not lacking much in that respect, depending on what you are looking at. i forget which bios i am using. its not the latest, i think it is 0803.
look at my sig. and that 3.75 came pretty easy, and i am running under 1.25V. with a quad.
that speaks volumes to me in terms of performance. i dont know if anyone here is running an x48 with a quad.

 

[espeed]

yes i noticed the cpu speed in your sig and does make me wonder if i should just take the plunge and go quad. are you water cooling?