Need some hardware advice please

[robothunter]

I have to build a new system in the next week or so. I have several components already but I need advice on RAM and a motherboard. I will mostly be using my computer for video encoding and some gaming. I don't have time to wait for the Q9550 to come out so I was planing on going with a E8500 (assuming they come out this week) and overclocking the hell out of it.

I ordered the XFX PVT88GYDF4 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB from newegg because I have a 1920x1200 LCD and I read that the 8800GT falls short at that resolution. Has anyone heard of any compatibility issues with a pci 2.0 card in a P35 board?

Motherboard: I have been reading reviews on the Abit IP35 Pro and it sounds like a great overclockers board for $179. The thing that concerns me about it is this excerpt from a bit-tech review:

Ethernet
Since Abit uses the JMB363 chipset and offers a PCI-Express x1 and x4 sockets hard-wired into the board there are no PCI-Express lanes left for the Ethernet controllers. This means Abit has been forced to use two PCI based Gigabit Ethernet controllers from Realtek, the RTL8110SC. Generally PCI Gigabit Ethernet controllers don’t perform as well as PCI-Express alternatives due to the difference between having to share a PCI bus versus a discrete point-to-point PCI-Express linkage. In addition, couple in the fact that the Texas Instruments Firewire controller uses the PCI bus and there are also three PCI slots provided too and you have potentially six devices sharing all sharing the same bandwidth.

In comparison, Asus has made it so that if the P5K(3) uses the second PCI-Express x16 slot at its x4 bandwidth instead of x1, then the other extra PCI-Express x1 lanes are disabled. This way it gives priority to the included PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet controllers. You’ll not notice any difference if you are running a 10/100 network, but if you have the infrastructure and rely on Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, the PCI solution will come out slower, especially if you have a bunch of PCI devices too.

I have a HDHomeRun networked tuner. So worst case scenario, I'm recording 2 high definition shows and streaming video to my PS3 all at the same time. That's a lot of bandwidth.

So what about an X38 board like the ASUS P5E ($229). Is it worth the extra money? The ASUS MAXIMUS FORMULA seems like a great overclockers board, but is that much better then the P5E?

RAM: This is another big question for me. Looking at the " The Official Core 2 OverClocking Database" it seems like a lot of people are using PC6400 or PC8500 RAM. The bus speed on the E8500 is 1333MHz. Wouldn't a 800MHZ or even a 1033MHz RAM module be a problem? LOCO LAPTOP has a QX9650 with the same 1333MHz bus with RAM running at 820MHz. Isn't that creating a bottleneck, or is the Intel Quad pumping thing throwing me off?

Thanks for taking the time to read all this. I put this in the overclocking section because thats exactly what I am planing to do with these parts. Can I get some advice please?

 

[entropism]

The FSB on the CPU is quad pumped, while the ram is doubled, so if you were going to run the CPU at 1600 FSB, your ram would be running at 400 (aka PC6400 stock speeds). From the engineering samples we've seen from the new 45nm chips, they look like they can hit 475-525 FSB speeds, so either get PC6400 ram that can OC like a beast, or higher rated stuff.

As for the board choices, I have the IP35-Pro, and I don't notice an issue in network speeds when using bittorrent, but if you were using a home network, it'd cause me to hesitate. Worst case scenario, you can always get a PCI-E NIC for what, $20? OR, you could get the IP-35 vanilla and not have to worry about the networking issues at all.

 

[robothunter]

I get it now so a 500 FSB overclock on a 1600 FSB divided by 4 would require my RAM to be running at 525. Which is just under the stock rating for PC8500.

Getting a PCI-E NIC card is a great idea. Thanks.

 

[Dangman]

No dude. A 500mhz actual FSB would mean that RAM would be running at 1000mhz or DDR2 1000. Remember that RAM speed is double that of the actual FSB speed. So if I have a 1333Mhz FSB CPU, my actual FSB would be 333Mhz due to Intel CPUs being quad-pumped and my RAM would be running at 667Mhz or DDR2 667. I think entropism mean that the RAM would be running at 800mhz or DDR2 800 speeds with a 1600Mhz FSB CPU.

 

[GreyRadean]

I ordered the XFX PVT88GYDF4 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB from newegg because I have a 1920x1200 LCD and I read that the 8800GT falls short at that resolution. Has anyone heard of any compatibility issues with a pci 2.0 card in a P35 board?

You can run the pci2.0 card on 1.0 boards just fine.

So what about an X38 board like the ASUS P5E ($229). Is it worth the extra money? The ASUS MAXIMUS FORMULA seems like a great overclockers board, but is that much better then the P5E?

Granted, I am extremely biased, but only because I absolutely love my Maximus. Best board I have ever owned and OC's like a demon.

Grey