P43 -vs- P45

I am trying to help a friend upgrade their PC.

Was going to recommend a P45 but I am curious what the actual difference between a P45 and P43 chipsets ?

-CPU will be Q6600
-Video card will single card...either one of the NV 200's or ATI 4870.
-4gb of DDR2 800

No real desire to do any serious OCing. Primary use will be for gaming...specifically Age of Conan.

Specifically we are looking at the GIGABYTE GA-EP43-DS3L or GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L. So around a $50.00 difference in price.

I know what the differences are between the board configurations..i,e ports, etc..But curious what will be missing if anything going with the P43 chipset over the P45?...

Nothing, get the P43. P45 chipsets have the ability to do Crossfire. You would see zero difference in performance.

aquemini said:

Nothing, get the P43. P45 chipsets have the ability to do Crossfire. You would see zero difference in performance.

Click to expand...

Thats a bit contradictory, lol, but yes, the only difference is Crossfire support. However, just because the chipset supports it, doesn't mean the manufacturer implements it on the board (eg. MSI P45 Neo3-FR).

Since there are no plans to run crossfire, the EP43-DS3L is a good choice.

Intel marketing also suggests that overclocking will also be better on the P45. Any truth to this? Do you think the P45 chipsets are binned higher?

Anandtech claim that P43 fsb overclocking is supposedly going to be restricted to ~400-425fsb but I don't think that anyone has tested a retail mobo yet to see fi t's true.

I can't get over 415 on my MSI P43 board. From researching around this seems to be the same experience from those with p43, 400-420fsb only.

My board is advertised as, "Greater OC than P35, PCI-e 2 x16, great value per dollar". It's not currently.

You could check out the new EP45-UD3R from Gigabyte. $104 bucks after MIR and seems to be gaining some popularity.

I thought about upgrading to a P45 but 9x415 for 3.73 with just a small vcore bump is decent. I mean really, am I going to see a difference hitting 4.0-4.2? Doubt I'll notice anything. lol