Looking for a good Mobo to do with E6600

[Shaun]

So I decided to cancel my order of an AMD athlon 2.6GHz X2 64bit AM2 skt, it was taking forever, they are out of stock in the UK, so I am thinking about the getting the E6600, I heard this is really good, but is it better than the AMD athlon 2.6GHz X2 64bit AM2 skt?

And I also need a good mobo for it, I am looking for one with crossfire. As you may have seen I know absolutely nothing about Intels and mobos, so any help?

[Freddie]

So I decided to cancel my order of an AMD athlon 2.6GHz X2 64bit AM2 skt, it was taking forever, they are out of stock in the UK, so I am thinking about the getting the E6600, I heard this is really good, but is it better than the AMD athlon 2.6GHz X2 64bit AM2 skt?

And I also need a good mobo for it, I am looking for one with crossfire. As you may have seen I know absolutely nothing about Intels and mobos, so any help?

I'll share my experiences from hunting round for a decent Core 2 Motherboard for which I have spent 2 months doing and in that I have acquired a fair amount of knowledge so I hope this helps.

SP you want a Core 2 supported motherboard and one that supports Xfire :hmmm:. Well I hope you don't mind spending money because they don't come cheap (tell a lie there is one, I'll come back to that one), the first motherboard I would put forward is form Intel themselves, its the 'Intel Extreme D975bx-305 975X' aka Bad Axe. Years ago no self respecting system builder would use an Intel own brand motherboard, but this motherboard is arguably the best 775 motherboard on the market.

Another board to consider is the Asus P5W DH Deluxe
(scroll down) , supports Xfire, a decent overclocker and comes with WIFI as well. It's also slightly cheaper then the Intel board coming in at around £150.

If you don't want to overclock you CPU and your looking to save a few a pounds but you want it to support Xfire then get the Asrock ConroeXFire-eSATA2 (first one). It only costs £63 which is less then half price of the Asus board and Intel board. But before you get to excited (after all this is a tempting option giving how much money you will save) this board is based on the Intel 945 chipset not the 975X and it only supports DDR2 667 Mhz. Although that doesn’t sound bad it is not the worst of it, don't expect top notch Xfire support the 2nd PCI-E graphics slot just sports 4 lanes (half of what you actually need and a quarter of what you actually want). In case you’re wondering as far as overclocking goes CPU voltage, CPU multiplier and Ram timings have done a disappearing act from the BIOS.

On your travels you might come across the MSI 975X Platinum PowerUP Edition, it supports Xfire and is a good overclocker, loads of features and is less money then the Asus and Intel boards. However I hear a lot of people are having troubles with this board trying to get it work correctly. Potentially it's only a BIOS flash from greatness but you might want to do some research on this board before even considering it.

BTW if you can do without XFire buy the Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3.

[Incinerate_IV]

Yes an E6600 is better than a FX-62.

[Shaun]

So I decided to get the MSI 975X Platinum PowerUP Edition, so any good suggestions for RAM? I heard that 2xsticks of 1GB RAM is faster than just one big stick. Also, with an E6600 and an X1900XT, how much power will my machine use?

[Freddie]

So I decided to get the MSI 975X Platinum PowerUP Edition, so any good suggestions for RAM? I heard that 2xsticks of 1GB RAM is faster than just one big stick. Also, with an E6600 and an X1900XT, how much power will my machine use?

I can't believe you went for that motherboard. Don't blame me if it doesn't work. Me and my big mouth....hold on............

[Shaun]

I can't believe you went for that motherboard. Don't blame me if it doesn't work. Me and my big mouth....hold on............

Erm, what are you suggesting? Btw, I was going to get it last night, but did something else instead, so I never actually went for it. Yet.

[Spiff]

bah overclockers.. i used them the other week, they sent me a dud motherbard. Didnt stop me ordering another one this week though. Was so harsh, just wanted to upgrade to dual core, so i got the only supported motherboard they have which has agp and pci-e.. didnt work, somehow managed to break my graphics card the next day also, and one of my ancient hard drives finally broke too. Im pretty surprised my computer is running at all at the moment, but ive got a new motherboard and pci-e graphics card in the post right now for £200. If something else breaks i may well cry.

Somewhat off topic i know, but its the kind of escapade that has to be recorded somewhere.

[Freddie]

Erm, what are you suggesting? Btw, I was going to get it last night, but did something else instead, so I never actually went for it. Yet.

I'm suggesting the MSI board is going to give you a pain in the back side. Read this thread for more info It seems the .715 bios is a lot smoother then the .700 and it appears to have ironed out a lot of the issues with the board. However the .715 Bios is stil not official supported by MSI and is still in its Beta stage.

[Shaun]

I'm suggesting the MSI board is going to give you a pain in the back side. Read this thread for more info It seems the .715 bios is a lot smoother then the .700 and it appears to have ironed out a lot of the issues with the board. However the .715 Bios is stil not official supported by MSI and is still in its Beta stage.

Hmm, maybe I will go for a different one then...

[Peter]

I think MSI power ed is the one used by a overclocker that reached 11 seconds on super pi, great overclocker.

but intels motherboard is great too

LOL

9.2 seconds- 5.5Ghz