ASUS Rampage II VS. P6T

[aldernon]

Well im in south america atm, and for the past month have been building a system on newegg's site. I check it regularly to make sure i stay updated on what im planning to buy, making sure prices are still good and parts still decent.

Today I saw that newegg added a new mobo to their x58 list. I was planning on buying the Asus P6T:
Newegg.ca - ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Now they offer the Rampage 2 for a little less:
Newegg.ca - ASUS Rampage II GENE LGA 1366 Intel X58 uATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards


This is how i see it:
Rampage: 24 gigs, SupremeFX X-Fi Audio, only 2 pxi 16x, smaller board
P6T: 12 gigs, realtek ALC 1200 Audio, 3 pci 2.0 (16x,16x,4x) larger board

IMO the Rampage 2 has better audio, and is cheeper... Is this a better board? I need confirmation from some pros. I dont plan on buying an audio card right away.

Thanks guys.

 

[aldernon]

Ive just read some benchmarks here:
Asus Rampage II GENE microATX motherboard review - TechSpot

The Rampage 2 seems to do better then the P6T (not by much)

 

[Yami]

Personally I'd go with the P6T, it has more PCI slots (which is always good if you want to have multiple GPUs, plus soundcard, network card etc.), a more extensive rear I/O, and slightly more room for coolers, and appears to have slightly better in-built cooling.

IMO the Rampage 2 has better audio, and is cheeper

Actually the P6T is cheaper, only by $2 though There's not likely to be much difference in the audio department, even if the Rampage is using X-fi.

 

[aspire]

My friend just bought the Rampage II Gene for a MicroATX i7 rig in a silverstone SG-01. Pretty smexy.

 

[hikaricloud]

MicroATX i7 rigs in general are kinda sexy. You don't expect them.

 

[aspire]

MicroATX i7 rigs in general are kinda sexy. You don't expect them.

He's water cooling it as well.

Gonna get a GTX260 with a full cover water block.

 

[aldernon]

i dont care about looks, i all about the feeling

Any more cons with microatx? Im planning on running a 4870, and maybe in a year or so another. Also after a while im looking at an x-fi sound card.

You really think the onboard xfi isnt anything special?

If you guys had to choose, what would it be? This is strictly a power-house build. Are these 2 boards good bang for the buck?

 

[hikaricloud]

He's water cooling it as well.

Gonna get a GTX260 with a full cover water block.

Wow, nice. That's gotta be interesting to see.

There's really no cons to going mATX besides the obvious of having less slots for cards, in my opinion.

 

[aspire]

If you want a smaller system get the Rampage II, otherwise get a full size board. I wouldn't reccomend the P6T however.

There are many other great boards out there. Take a look at Gigabyte and Evga/XFX's offerings.

 

[hikaricloud]

The Biostar isn't half bad either, for overclocking.