new build - E8500 board?

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MarkK79

n00b
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
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I am leaning toward and E8500 CPU, 4 GB DDR2 RAM (unless someone can convince me DDR3 is worth it), Vista and 4870 or 260 video card. No plan to ever SLI or Crossfire.

Primarily a gaming rig.

Don't plan to overclock.

Haven't built a PC in about 3 years - should I be looking at P35, P45, X38 or X48? Just looking for the best stock performance.

Thanks.
 
If you don't consider overclocking, all the chipsets you listed are a waste of your time. Stick with a P31 or P43 chipset board.

If you consider overclocking, a P35 would be your best bet.
 
The IP35 hasn't been sold in most major online stores for the past several months. In fact, I think Abit already phased out that motherboard.

Anyway, at stock speeds, the P35, P45, X38, and X48 chipsets perform roughly the same. If there is a performance increase, it's usually too small to warrant the extra costs.

Some motherboard recommendations:
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L Intel P43 Motherboard - $95
MSI P45 Neo3-FR Intel P45 Motherboard - $120
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R Intel P45 Motherboard - $135
Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 Motherboard - $150
DFI Lanparty DK X38-T2R Intel X38 Motherboard - $180
Asus P5E Deluxe Intel X48 Motherboard - $220
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 Intel X48 Motherboard - $225

Just to help you out: All of these motherboards have PCI-E 2.0 which may be useful for future GPU upgrades. If you don't need RAID, more than 6 SATA ports and only need semi-decent overclocking, check out the DS3L. If you need 8 SATA ports, RAID, 4 PCI slots, and legacy ports, then get the Neo3-Fr. If you don't need more than 6 SATA ports but want RAID, firewire, a second PCI-E x16 port, a second gigabit port, support for 16GB of RAM, optional eSATA, x8/x8 Crossfire, and high overclocks, then get the DS3R. If you like the DS3R but need 8 SATA ports, want an onboard pre-installed fast booting Linux setup, only need support for 8GB of RAM and don't need a second gigabit port, get the Asus P5Q Pro. If you want Crossfire with full x16/x16 bandwidth, get the Lanparty DK X38. Do note that the Asus website can be slow sometimes.
 
Stock performance won't be drastically affected by any board out there. Theoretically you could get the cheapest P35 board out there and still have similar performance to a high-end X48 board if both are running at stock. I would suggest a middle-of-the-road P43 or P45 board from Danny's list a few posts back just so you have something pretty good, although realistically you could pick the cheapest board and it wouldn't really matter.
 
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