QX6700 - alternative to 680i

[BlueCreek]

I'm trying to figure out what way to go with a motherboard for the Kentsfield. Before I had decided to skip the E6600 and move up to the quad (I do a ton of multi-tasking with graphics rendering and media encoding,) I had decided to get the EVGA 680i to go with my new system. However, the boards at NVIDIA and EVGA have threads claiming you can't OC the FSB of the 680i boards past 300-330 with any stability. So while you can OC with the QX6700 multiplier up into the 3.6 range, the FSB and memory speed is pretty low, not showing anywhere near the capabilities the 680i FSB has with the conroe.

So, should I therefor skip the 680i and go with some other board like the Asus P5B or Bad Axe 2 which don't have the same FSB issue that I've been reading about withe 680i?


Reference threads regarding the issue:
NVIDIA Forum Thread
EVGA Forum Thread

 

[kirbyrj]

I think it depends on whether or not you want SLI. If you do, you're kind of stuck, but if you're willing to not have it, I'd look into one of the Intel chipset boards. 965 seems to be a pretty safe bet for quad core from what I've seen.

 

[AMD_Man]

I have a Core 2 Duo E6600. I found that I can drop the multipler and up the FSB to 400MHz, running the RAM at it's standard speed and the CPU at it's standard speed and it's all 100% stable doing memtest86 or Prime95 and extended periods of running time. The only thing is the temps are a bit higher because SpeedStep will not function anymore.