Best motherboard?

[mnelson07]

What is the flat-out best motherboard for gaming as far as settings, speed, and flexibility for oc'ing and such. I'm not sure whether or not I will OC, but having the option is nice and makes it that much more tempting for me to do it.

The core components that this "super" mobo would run looks like this (for me that is):

C2D E6600
2GB G.SKILL (anything else out there better?)
eVGA 8800GTX

The reason I ask is because I want to cut through all the BS with the wifi and crap like that, I just want the best overall performing motherboard that has flexibility and the capability of oc'ing or just being tinkered with.

 

[Ronnie]

MSI 650i is one of the best IMO
its cheap and it overclocks well

 

[Sora]

Um...first off what kind of G.skill it better be the HZ's.

A super motherboard huh? I guess either the MSI P6N Platinum or the Asus P5N32-E in terms of speed flexibility and price.

However the new P35 chipset is out and it might be worth looking into.

 

[mnelson07]

Yeah, it's the HZ's.

I guess I'm still stuck. So far I like that MSI P6N more than the Asus P5N. Which is funny because I normally prefer Asus.
When is the release date on the P35 chipset?

 

[Sora]

The P35 chipset is already out Im pretty sure.

 

[mnelson07]

Yeah, I just saw that... sorry for my stupidity.
But then again, wouldn't that require me getting the DDR3 RAM which is like $400 for 2gb?

 

[Sora]

I'm not exactly sure you need DDR3 ram becuase it's the same amount of pins....240 I think you can run DDR2 in it but don't count me on that. Ask around heh

 

[mnelson07]

What about eVGA's 680i motherboard? Especially right now on Newegg they have that combo deal with it and the eVGA 8800GTX Ultra.

If that mobo is good, it's a great deal and I'm definitely tempted to get it.

 

[b1gapl]

The majority of the P35s out right now, support DDR2. Only two I know of, at newegg that supports DDR3, is the Gigabyte P35-DS3R and the ASUS P5K3 Deluxe.

What about eVGA's 680i motherboard? Especially right now on Newegg they have that combo deal with it and the eVGA 8800GTX Ultra.

If that mobo is good, it's a great deal and I'm definitely tempted to get it.

The 680i aren't that good. They just have alot of features. The 650i would be better for the money.

 

[Sora]

The 680i is not recommended becuase honestly it had major problems initally. A lot have been worked out but it really is no different than the 650i in terms of performance. The 680i is just the 650i with 2 more SATA ports, another LAN port, and FULL x16 SLI. While the x16 SLI sounds good it doesn't make a difference even with SLI 8800GTX's. Actually in most tests the 650i gets 1 or 2 FPS MORE than it's big brother 680i regardless of what it has. We here try to stick away from recommending it just becuase it's not worth the money unless you think 2 more SATA ports and an extra LAN is worth the money...but like I said the 680i had a lot of bugs in it as well.