Does X48 have any drawbacks besides price compared to P45?

veras

Weaksauce
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Jul 6, 2003
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I'm on the verge of putting together a new system, and while in the short term I'm not going to be using crossfire, I may upgrade to it within a few months pending how happy I am with the system's performance. From what I understand, there is a performance hit for crossfire on a P45 board compared to an X48 one. I'm wondering if I should eat the small(?) extra cost to get an X48, or just get a P45 because of other advantages or because the crossfire performance hit too small to really worry about.
 
Unless you just have to have the absolute max crossfire performance, the X48 is not a good cost/performance in my opinion. In this article they do a comparison of different chipset's performance in crossfire and they concluded this between X48 and P45, "we are not sure that at this price it is worth the 5% Crossfire performance gain". If you have a lofty budget then yes go for it, but if you like to get the best bang for your buck then I believe the P45 is more cost effective.

As far as other advantages the P45 does have over the X48 not related to crossfire are support for 16GB or ram, 65nm chipset (in other words runs cooler), and in most cases it does overclock higher. After all the FSB record is held by the P45 chipset @ 724MHz (2896MHz QDR).
 
Allow me to jump in :cool: I am returning a Gigabyte X48-DS4 (which I'll replace with a different board). I like the x48 because of the Dual PCI-E 16 slots but like you said, Camaro, I can't find anything that has stellar OC'ing at a decent price. Could you recommend some boards? Also, I'll be replacing my A-Data memory (2x 2gb). If you culd suggest some good OC'ing ram that isn't finicky with the boards you you recommend that'd be extra awesome. :)
 
Allow me to jump in :cool: I am returning a Gigabyte X48-DS4 (which I'll replace with a different board). I like the x48 because of the Dual PCI-E 16 slots but like you said, Camaro, I can't find anything that has stellar OC'ing at a decent price. Could you recommend some boards? Also, I'll be replacing my A-Data memory (2x 2gb). If you culd suggest some good OC'ing ram that isn't finicky with the boards you you recommend that'd be extra awesome. :)

Are you still set on getting an X48 board? Also what is your budget?
 
Just get a P45 if your on a budget and if you don't mind getting 8x/8x speed for Crossfire. Find a P45 board that is under $200 should do the trick, but thats up to you to decide.
 
Well, I have 2 4870s and I want to purchase a 3007wfp; the 2x16 PCI-E would be nice. I don't want to spend $300+ on one of those DDR3 X48s... Plus I'm not up to dropping retarded amounts of money on 4 gigs of DDR3 in the first place.

Besides the Gigabyte DS4 the only other well reviewed X48 DDR2 mobo I've seen is a DFI... but it seems TONS of those boards are defective and/or funky out of the box, too.

If a P45 board isn't going to kill my xFire performance so my 4870s can still run my 3007 I'm ok w/ it.
 
The Gigabyte X38-DS4 (not X48) is awesome without such a large price tag.
Never drops a beat and gets to 520MHz FSB with no fuss, stock motherboard voltages.
Currently running my [email protected] rock stable for over half a year now.
 
Well, I have 2 4870s and I want to purchase a 3007wfp; the 2x16 PCI-E would be nice. I don't want to spend $300+ on one of those DDR3 X48s... Plus I'm not up to dropping retarded amounts of money on 4 gigs of DDR3 in the first place.

Besides the Gigabyte DS4 the only other well reviewed X48 DDR2 mobo I've seen is a DFI... but it seems TONS of those boards are defective and/or funky out of the box, too.

If a P45 board isn't going to kill my xFire performance so my 4870s can still run my 3007 I'm ok w/ it.

Did you read the article I linked in post #2? It shows that the X48 only has a 5% performance advantage in best case senario over the P45. So going with a P45 would no where near "kill" xFire performance. I would recommend the P5Q-E board for $154.99. Many people have easily been able to get 500+ FSB with this board and it has a ton of other great features.
 
Thanks for the info Nenu but after checking the reviews that board sometimes runs into the same issues as the x48 version. I'm glad you haven't encountered any though... Camaro, I'll try the P5Q-E, thanks.
 
Did you read the article I linked in post #2? It shows that the X48 only has a 5% performance advantage in best case senario over the P45. So going with a P45 would no where near "kill" xFire performance. I would recommend the P5Q-E board for $154.99. Many people have easily been able to get 500+ FSB with this board and it has a ton of other great features.


As stated a current ~5% performance advantage may not be sufficient for many to plunk down the difference.

However, I do have an X48 board and I'm quite satisfied. I'm "hoping" that the next generation of GPU's will show a marked increase in that performance advantage. But that is all speculation. One that is based on me trying to hold onto the particular MB for as long as is possible. (Was previously a socket 939 user for years)

4 years down the road, I'll likely go to whatever is cutting edge at that moment and then hold onto it for a large time.

The question here is, will the peformance difference with the GPU offset the possible benefit of 16GB ram versus 8GB? Depends on what Vista 7 x64 bit edition holds in store I guess.
 
I have the Gigabyte X48-DS4, and Crossfired 4870 X2s.

The board has been nothing short of excellent since I put it together.
Never once has there been an issue, I'm using a Q6600 @ 3.3GHz and certainly could push it higher but there's no need.

If you are going to use DDR2, then there is no reason not to buy an X48.

If you decide to go with DDR3, it would carry over to the next generation of i7 chipsets, however............6 of one..........;)
 
If you're looking for a P45 board I would suggest the Biostar TP45HP. I just got mine a few days ago from newegg and it runs flawlessly...also it's def one of the best overclocking boards out there with a pricetag of only $110
 
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