Which Mobo is best in my situation?

[mojoRT]

Hi Everyone!

I've been browsing around many of the motherboard threads in the forums and every one of them have been extremely helpful! Thanks so much!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Conroe mobo but I don't know which one.

I'm looking for one with SLI and I won't be doing any overclocking.

1) The P5N32-SLI SE and the P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi AP are two I've been looking at alot. The main difference I see is that different chipsets used. For what I'll be doing, is it worth the wait and the money to go for the Premium? Asus advertises this "8-phase power design"... does it actually work? Is the integrated WiFi any good vs a PCI WiFi card? Basically, do you think the nForce 590 is going to have a significant improvement over the nForce4 in terms of normal tasks (like Internet and Word) and gaming? Don't know if it matters, but I'm looking to buy a BFG 7900 GT.

http://www.gpureview.com/database/images/videocards/bfg/7900GT_256_PCIe_CardShot.jpg

2) Just out of curiosity (because I was looking at the P5NSLI for fun), how much of an improvement is DDR800 over DDR667 in terms of just normal tasks and gaming? From my understanding: not much at all. I've tried google but it's nice to get a direct answer from you guys =). If I'm not doing any overclocking, I should just stick with Value RAM, right? I'm kind of fond of OCZ's Special Ops and from what I hear it's just Value RAM with colorful heatsinks... (is that what they are, heat sinks?)

http://img.presence-pc.com/news/o/c/ocz_urbanelite.jpg

3) Glanced at DFI's NF590 Intel Edition board... looks good... but I'm not overclocking anything so it's probably not worth the wait and price, right?

4) ABIT, MSI, ASROCK, Gigabyte, etc... do they have any mobo's out right now which are worth looking at?

Any links or exact Google searches I should do are very much appreciated (especially your opinions)! Thanks so much!!!

[Pafet]

1) no idea :D

2) check this links from Anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=15
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2813

IMO you need good memory for overclocking. If you are not, and you said you are not, this is where you can save some bucks

3) My thoughts exactly

4) I'm tring to decide myself... I'm currently looking at the Gigabyte 965P DS3 thing but I'm not sure. And what the hell is it with the Intel D975XBX??? I can get it for about the same price, is it significally better than 965P for non overclockers??

[Toss3]

I would suggest the Asus P5B deluxe, if you were to overclock, which you are not, so I think any core 2 duo compatible board would do(I think there are tweaked drivers that allow you to use SLi on Intel chipsets). :) You might want to look at the 965< chipsets as they perform the best especially when you don't overclock.
Get decent 800mhz ram with good timings, since you don't have to overclock them to get good performance(value ram often comes with lower timings).
You might also want to consider two overclocked 7900gt's with 512mb ram, Sparkle, I guess, offers the best-performing 7900gts - just check guru3d.com for their review. (nana2)

[Pafet]

Toss3, I think I'll take your advice on the 965P mobo.
But what would you recommend: 1GB of 800MHz high performance ram or 2GB of EL CHEAPO value ram? because thats about the price difference...
This is the last thing I have to decide before my e-comeback (pirate) :o

[Toss3]

Toss3, I think I'll take your advice on the 965P mobo.
But what would you recommend: 1GB of 800MHz high performance ram or 2GB of EL CHEAPO value ram? because thats about the price difference...
This is the last thing I have to decide before my e-comeback (pirate) :o
I'd go for the high performance ram, but if you are on a budget then go for the value. There's not much of a difference if you don't overclock, and value ram gives you decent performance. :)

Here are a few reviews:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/2gb-roundup.html
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2809
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/18/pushing_your_ddr2_ram_to_the_max/

Btw. I don't think the c2d can utilize the whole bandwith offered by a pair of 800Mhz ddr2 sticks, so getting 667mhz shouldn't make a big difference.

EDIT: Found these on the xtremesystems forums: http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/5757/c2dddr2sk0.jpg and http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5832/c2dxd8.jpg

[Toss3]

could you post the link from extremesystems website?
sure, http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114560

[Pafet]

Thanks man, I guess I'll go with 1GB cursair.
Sorry for kinda hijacking your thread mojoRT :)

[superklye]

You're going to see MUCH better performance with 2GB of RAM than having the super-high speed stuff. If it was between 2GB cheap and 2GB awesome, that'd be different, but

more RAM with higher timings > less RAM with lower timings