X58 motherboard question
 

I'm still looking at possible configurations for the PC I'm going to get in Feb/March, and one of the things I've been confused over is the motherboard. Looking through the prices for different motherboards, from different manufacturers, there's a huge range from $470 (NZD) for the cheapest Gigabyte board to $1000-ish for the most expensive ones. So...exactly what is the difference between these boards? I want to be able to overclock the i7 by as much as reasonably possible, will the more expensive boards be able to do this better than the cheaper ones? And which are simply better value for money?

Thanks

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

It usually depends on the brand and the options added to the board itself. Which boards are you looking at?

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

When I build my i7 system these are one the boards I plan to get

Newegg.com - EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - ASUS P6T Deluxe LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Both are highly reviewed, support both SLI and Crossfire.

Both hover around $500 NZD

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

The Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 (NZ$470), the MSI X58 Eclipse, (NZ$854), the Asustek P6T Deluxe (NZ$669.38), plus a few others I can't remember right now. I'm looking mainly at overclock ability in comparison to price, as far as my usage for features would be concerned, I think they all have more than enough USB ports and such than I need.

Another concern I have is whether they support quad-SLI (none of the specs and reviews made it clear to me whether they did or not, and I don't know whether if they just support 2- or 3-card SLI it means they support 4-way) since I plan to buy a GTX 295 (cheaper in new zealand than GTX260 SLI and mostly better performance), and a possibility in the future would be to add another card to increase graphics performance. It's not as major as the price and overclocking ability, but its still something to consider.

And Stalker, for your information the EVGA board sells in new zealand for closer to 800. But the ASUS looks about right.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Quad SLI only uses two cards, so if it has two PCI-E x16 slots it should work

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

I would say go for the Asus board. From my experience Asus boards will clock like crazy. If you're willing to spend some cash I would say get a DFI board though. Stay away from MSI and Gigabyte makes some decent stuff.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

DFI only has one X58 board right now

Newegg.com - DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg users have had their share of trouble with it, not sure if its wide spread

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Newegg users are usually retarded.
Most of the time they would go into a bios on a board like that and screw with one of the memory settings then say the board doesn't work because its a POS when in reality they get a board too advanced for them and they just want to blame it on something else.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

I seriously suggest you get atleast 10 Sata ports, or 8 standard and 2 or 4 "Special" sata ports (Like the fail "GSATA" gigabyte do)
You can never have enough sata ports, Currently, if MSY who did the warrenty for my EX38-DS4 didn't stuff up and give me a new board accidently (I never told em they upgraded me :D) I would have to run a PCI Sata board to have enough sata ports, I run 8 sata devices, and would like to upgrade further, but can't without spending shit loads on getting a PCI Sata raid board.

I'd personally get the Gigabyte, and not just because its cheap as pie, but because I trust the name and I'm a bit biased towards Gigabyte, I've seen and had more issues with Asus, MSI and nVidia boards, but thats just my personal experience*Waits for people to argue with my experience and bad luck*

Kow, If majority of newegg users say something is shit, it usually is, besides you can tell the BS posts from the non BS posts and can tell if someone is just retarded

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

The solution to this particular issue is called: 'Buy some bigger hard drives to replace your tiddly little 250GB ones.' ;)

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

That achieves nothing, I run raid 0 on those 250s, I'll still end up 2 Sata ports down ;)

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Using larger drives achieves having more space which is presumably what you want if you're looking to upgrade your storage by installing a SATA PCI card?

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

No, I'm looking to add another BluRay drive, and another 1.5TB Seagate to Mirror my Rd 5 and 0
I guess I could replace my 2 Hot Spares in the Rd 5 with the BluRay drive and 1.5TB Mirror, but that means rebuilding my Raid again.

I personally think companys need to move to ETX boards, most people that would get them have the cases, and it means that you could fit Quad Sli/Crossfire, and still use the PCI slots for raid cards, tv tuners etc, without the now Dual Slot GPUs blocking those ports like they do in ATX boards.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Aye but if you had more storage on fewer drives you'd be able to add an extra BluRay drive without needing an extra port.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

But less drives means no Raid 5 for my OS and Games, and my OS, since It has to be on Raid cause 10k drives are way outa my budget, has to be a Raid 5 considering its an intergrated raid controller (Often very flaky).

I could ditch the two 250s and upgrade all three 320s to give me the storage I need, but then I've payed, at the time, 70$ for each 250 and 80-90$ for each 320GB drive, which will no longer get used, and I don't wanna throw that type of cash away so easily.
Being HDDs and cheap as chips, They won't sell for peanuts

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

So you'd keep the 320GB drives in RAID 5 and replace the 200GB ones. Means you're only replacing 2 drives rather than 3+ and you keep the other drives in RAID 5. Even if you were to put a pair of fairly large drives (say 1TB) in RAID 0 to replace the 250GB ones it would still work out cheaper than a decent SATA card with a reasonable number of ports.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Yes, but replaceing two 250s with 1TBs is both expensive, and doesn't free up sata ports, something most companys like to lack

I don't just want more storage, Im happy with my current 1.1TB, But I still need another two sata ports one for another BluRay drive, and one for a mirror 1.5TB drive
External 1.5s are just to expensive I find, and lack in speed, and that means software raid :S

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

So I have the Gigabyte board, for $470, the Asus board for $669, and the DFI board for $750+. So is there any operative difference in CPU stability and reliability between the three? Because obviously if the differences don't matter to me or are insignificant in comparison to the price difference, I would rather get the cheapest one and put the money to use somewhere else.

Another question, what is the difference between PCIe and 2.0, and what is the difference between x16 and x8?

...why? I think 1.3TB is quite enough for the conceivable future, 1.6 if I decide to add another Velociraptor in RAID 0. And that takes four SATA ports, not 10.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Well, the thing is that people that actually know what they're doing have no problems with the board. Go look on forums where people set world records for overclocking (ocf, or XS) and ask them if DFI boards suck.

For your motherboard. You are clearly in the minority. There is no need for larger motherboards. If anything motherboards are going to get smaller. If you need more SATA ports get a PCI sata card for your blue-ray drives. You dont want to get a RAID card so get that and use your onboard ports for RAID.


pendantic - I would say go for the Asus board. The i7 asus boards are highly regarded by high end overclockers. Great for maxing out your CPU be it on air, water, or extreme cooling.
PCIe 2.0 is the second revision of PCIe. It has half the latency and twice the bandwidth. So a PCIe 2.0 8x slot performs the same as a PCIe 16x slot. The only way the difference matters between 16x and 8x is if you are going to run crossfire 4870X2's

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Ahhhhhh the joys of having a VelociRaptor and 3TB of storage in an external box. :p

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Eh, VelociRaptors arn't cheap, And not for the size I want.
A fricken 74gb is like 280$ here. Its way cheaper to raid and get more storage lol.
I stay away from External Drives for general computer use, They are to slow for my liking, and again, are more expensive then need be, Unless you make it yourself, but im to lazy for that.

For everyones sake we should hope they get larger.
Like I said, Its impossible on standard ATX boards to have Tri Sli or Quad, and still use your PCI slots, for that companies have to up to ETX boards.

I would love to run Crossfire in my rig, But can't as I would have wasted 100 bucks on a TV tuner and 200 on dedicated sound card, Why, Because the now common Dual Slot GPUs block the PCI slots, why, Because motherboards are to small.

There is pleanty of room for more sata ports, if companies actually phase out the crap that is rarely used on the "Enthusist" boards, such as IDE, but more so, Floppys.
Remove that crap like most are doing with X58 boards, and add 2 or 4 more Sata ports.
Move Ram and CPU socket up, and put room for atleast one PCI socket to not be blocked.

It'd be rather easy, just they never think about design and placement, but rather pointless features such as floppy and IDE

Which would go in which slot not occupied by a Dual slot GPU or another PCI device?
I have 3 PCI slots, 1 is blocked because boards are to small/crap design, the other 2 are in use.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Actually, that's a good idea. I don't think we even have <100GB Velociraptors here, but 300GB is NZ$420. But it is still much cheaper to put two drives into RAID 0, you get much more storage: for $400 here you can get two 750GB HDDs. So more space. Lots more.

Okay, so ASUS it is.

I don't seem to recall any mobos with 3 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, it's always 1 x16, 1 x16/x8, and 1 x8...?

They are good for carrying stuff around, though. But in that vein, I don't see the point of a 1.5TB external HDD...


Oh, and one more random question (I'm thinking of these just as I go along with this...) what does the .11 bit mean when someone or somewhere says a 7200.11 hard drive?

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

You know alot of people need a floppy for drivers right?
Your statements are pretty much null. If you want all your PCI slots go for water its that simple. Boards do NOT need to be any bigger. Things will continue to get smaller. You are very much in the minority of needing more space. Perhaps you should have gotten a PCIx tuner and sound card instead. Or you could always get a PCIx sata controller. Not everything has to be PCI. And if you dont like the feature set you should buy another motherboard that suits your needs next time.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

We still have a few floppies of stuff for XP installations and stuff, but I thought that was already being phased out in favour of the CD years ago (case in point, my Radeon 9600)

Another question (sorry... =p), what are the other ports on the motherboard actually used for? And are there any other uses for the PCIe ports other than for graphics cards?

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

They don't make a 74GB VelociRaptor. Don't go confusing them with the old Raptors now, believe me they're in a different league (I have a 150GB Raptor around as well).
It's a 4 bay eSATA box ta very much, more than fast enough. ;) To be honest though the main reason I got it is so that I could downsize my machine. As awesome as the Lian Li V2000 is they're not exactly small cases...

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

You do know more people have the internet then floppy drives?
Never in the past 3 years have I seen anything come on floppys.
They where phased out like 9yrs ago now, I remember it being hard to buy floppys in 2000!

Go for water?! Water what?
Graphics cards will still be dual slot, overlapping other PCI slots, water cooling fixes nothing.
Bigger boards means your not wasting money on slots and things you can't use because the board is to small.
You either my PCIx in Express, or PCIx in the tiny mofo that I forget its speed but is 1-2cm in lenght slot.

PCIe slots, solves nothing, 1 is taken, the other then removes what I want...SLI/Crossfire.
PCIx *tiny mofo?* is again, overlapped and useless.

Further, BOTH varients of cards are extremely rare to find down in Aus, Even online Aus stores.

Keep in mind Kow, this motherboard is a top of the line X48 worth near 500 AUD (Retails for 450 AUD)
Buying this one at the time wasn't an option, it was just way to much, its only cause of a stuff up I got it, And for a top of the line mobo, from one of the best companies in mobos, I would expect a lot more.

Further, ETX is only 2 - 4CM bigger then ATX, which STILL fits in standard Mid ATX cases, So size in the cases is not an issue.
You say things get smaller, And yet look at the way of the phone, The more features, the bigger it gets.
Only with a phone, you can actually use all features, with a motherboard, your limited because the refuse to go a bigger size, which is what ALOT of enthusiast's require, larger motherboards.

The average motherboard has 2 usable PCIe slots, and 1 Usable PCI slot, The average mobo has 2 PCIe slots, 3 PCI slots, 1 - 2 PCIx slots.
An average PC using features with the motherboard, Has a 2* ESATA bracket, 2 ODDs, and 1 HDD.
Which is 5 Sata ports, yet most motherboards feature only 6 Sata ports, That leaves very very little room for upgrading.
If you have an external HDD, it's most likely going to use Esata now a days, so you dont have much choice if you want to use Esata but keep the bracket.

There is no reason to not push ETX motherboards, and I have stong feelings it is the way of the future, Companies will realize that they can't fit all the features they want, and a motherboard standard that is more then 12 years old.
It's like 64bit, thousands of people said "no" to it, "4GB ram is never going to be needed" yet low and behold, people are running 12GB ram, servers are running EXABYTES of ram, some servers are running 128bit OSs because 64bit doesn't support enough ram, yet it supports 16 Exabytes.

BluRay ODDs are much larger then CD ODDs and DVD ODDs are larger then CD ODDs, That hasn't changed since DVDs first came around, the drives are still larger.
Things are getting bigger in order to do what they are designed for.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

PCI-X slots are huge, larger than anything you'll have on your motherboard (there's no way in hell that a modern desktop board is going to have a PCI-X slot). I guess you mean a PCI-E 1x slot which are the small, relatively slow PCI-E connectors that are slowly replacing PCI?

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Actually the "average" motherboard has 1pci-e slot, 1 pcix slot, and 1 pci slot. You are in the minority. Btw, I've seen your motherboard you can have a pcix sound card, and pcix sata card then add a pci tuner. Also, I hope you know that you can use the PCIe slots as PCIx slots also since you're not even using crossfire.

And when I talked about water I meant watercooling. Which you dont have to play stupid about. There are full coverage blocks for cards that dont take up any extra slots and the tubing goes up so it doesn't interfere with other cards. Innovatek Cool-Matic 8800GT (G92)
Like I said before. All you have to do is plan things out better and buy a board that has all the features you need or buy expansion cards that will fit according to your motherboard.

Pedantic - you can use the PCIe slots for RAID cards or use them as a PCIx slot if you dont need to add an extra video card. They are 16x slots but also backwards compatible to 8x cards (RAID), 4x cards (more RAID), and PCIx (pretty much everything that also comes in PCI)

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

The high-end X58 boads have full 2.0 x16(x3) PCI-E slots


The only time I've seen that is with Seagate's drives. In that case, it only refers to the drive series.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

I thought the motherboard usually has a built-in RAID controller anyway? But that clears it up a bit.

So it doesn't mean anything special then? Because I've never seen anything other than .11

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

You'll find that PCI-X/PCIx is basically a double length, 64-bit PCI slot with double the bandwidth of traditional PCI which is used on server systems. An average motherboard does not have them, never has, and never will, period.

Modern boards generally have PCI slots and a mixture of PCI-E slots, be they 32x/16x/8x/4x/2x/1x. Not PCI-X.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

PCI-e 1x slots are generally regarded as PCIx slots since it is a PCIe 1x slot.
And it is assumed what someone is talking about especially since we are dealing with standard motherboards and not server boards.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Wo, see I didn't even think about the 64bit PCI slots.
Thats just stupid think they'd be in a standard board, and thinking you can ever get/afford PCIx components.

I wasn't playing stupid, you are.
My cooling doesn't play any affect on how small the PCB of the boards are.
The simple fact is, boards are to small, having water or air will not change that.

Actually, now I know that its the 64bit PCI slots you can't.
I tried fitting a raid card from work in my system rather then run on the intergrated, it didn't fit.

OMG make up your mind as to which one you mean.
Its either 1* PCI or 64bit PCI

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

You dont need 2 slots for a video card if you have a waterblock. Thus, it frees up a PCIx slot. And if you think a board is too small why dont you get a server board then? Those will surely have enough SATA ports for you.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

lol, yeah you know, I'll just pull apart my graphics card to remove the heatsink and fan, then go out and buy watercooling.
I think you'll find kow, 90% of GPUs are dual slot, weather or not you like it. I rather not play operation on them.

FYI, Server boards are also ATX size, They don't have need for TV Tuners or GPUs, and so they have A) Different slots and B) The same small size.
Also, The X3200s and X3400s a common server, Their boards only have 6 Sata ports on there, I'm already over that amount, And im not going to pay 2K for a blade board now am I, considering it'll lack features such as PCIe 2, and more to the point, PCIe slots

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Then stop your bitching and deal with what you have. The fact is that 90% of video cards DO NOT use dual slots. The fact is that 90% of video cards are onboard. Thus your need for "more slots" is pretty much null and void considering that you're the .0001% that needs 342897348923784973892074 PCIe slots and 483574895789345 PCI slots.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Thats just bullshit and you know it.
Find me one 200 series, 9 series, and original 8 series that doesn't use Dual slot.

I specifically remember MANY articles on the 8800GT saying how it was the first single slot 8 series solution. GTX 280, Dual slot, 260, Dual slot, 295 dual slot, GX2's all dual slots, 9800GTX dual slot, GTX+ dual slot, 8800GTX Dual slot, GTS dual slot, GTS G92, Dual slot, 8800 Ultra Dual slot.

Actually no, get rid of the sarcasm and grow up a bit.
I have more then enough PCIe slots, more then enough PCI slots, What I don't have is enough room on the motherboard to actually USE what I've payed for.

There is no point in having slots that will get overlapped by other cards, I aswell just throw 100$ down the drain, and the other 300$ for my motherboard.
I've payed, for somethign I can't use, Because companies are to thick and stupid to think "Hey, they arn't usable in the majority of "Enthusiast" systems, maybe we should make a better design or use ETX instead!"

What I NEED is more Sata ports, 8 isn't enough, I may be in the minority there using more then 8 sata ports, but im in the majority when it comes to wanting to use slots that are over lapped by oversized graphics cards.

Kow, don't tell me to stop my bitching and deal with what I have, if I couldn't deal with it I wouldn't use my system/couldn't use my system.
I'm not bitching, im more stating that companies need to consider better designed boards or simple make varients in ETX sizes for those that actually want to use all the slots on their board.
Yes, I want to use both PCI slots, and all three PCIe slots, that can't happen due to the fact they place slots to close together (due to small sized PCB) and don't stop to consider the design and what components go into said slots.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

You dont even have crossfire. And you're not even using all your slots.

Dont tell me that high end cards make up 90% of the market because that is not so. I bet you a billion dollars that low end ($50) cards sell 3x as much as high end cards. Thus your "90% of all cards" nonsense doesn't fly.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

I do have to agree with that to be fair. Far from being in the majority by wanting to use all your slots, I imagine that the majority of systems on sale today have everything onboard and don't have anything in the expansion slots at all. Even those machines that do have dedicated graphics cards, the vast majority of them are going to be low end through to midrange ones with single slot coolers.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Let me rephrase, Majority of Enthusiast systems.
Cruddy home systems I don't count, I mean us, "Gamers" or "Enthusiasts" (however you spell that crappy gay work lol)

Did you not read?
I want to do crossfire, but can't as it will mean I wasted money on a TV Tuner, because the PCIe slot will OVERLAP the PCI slot being used by the TV Tuner.

If I go crossfire, I lose my PCI slot from overlap of todays huge ass crappy mofo GPUs.
90% of enthusist cards, are either 7, 8, 9 or 200 series, and it was around mid range 7 series (7600 say) when the whole stock, huge ass, dual slot GPUs started coming into play, Now most of the 8, 9 and 200 series are dual slot.
They also make up majority of cards *easily 90%* used by either gamers or PC enthusists.

No this isn't me changing my argument, this is me rephrasing what I am meaning.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Actually. The whole dual-slot thing came about when the Geforce FX 5900 first came out and people would call it the "leaf blower".

You dont need dual-slot cards if you're going to do crossfire. Just stick two 4850s with reference coolers in there and you're good to go. Just for your info, 4850s outnumber all the gtx2xx cards and 4870/4870x2 cards. Most of those are also on the reference cooler too. So there goes the 90% of enthusiast systems also.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Guys, cool it NOW or available slots are going to be the last thing you are going to be worrying about.

This is a LAST AND ONLY warning for everyone.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

4850/4870
3850/3870
All X2s
Are all Dual slots unless they are some super duper cheap company who don't give a crap about the cooling of it.
The supplier I would buy from if I was going to, all the brands they had, were ALL dual slot cards.

:O really? I thought it was a requirement.
But no, I know I don't, its more just no choice, its either Dual slot or nothing.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

The reference coolers for the 4850 and 3850 are single slot designs, and there's nothing wrong with them as far as I'm aware.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

There are even aftermarket single slot coolers that come on some cards which perform better than the dual-slot versions (ie:Saphire Radeon 3870 "Toxic edition")

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Let me clarify.
My country = Australia
Your Countries = America/Texis

You have a shit load more variety on what you buy.
Down in Aus unless we buy online, we don't get the fancy versions of cards, atleast not in adelaide.
No XFX, BFG, EVGA so on and so forth.
We have cheaper versions, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, XpertVision etc.
I've never seen a newer card (I mean this year/last year) that was a single slot, not in our stores atleast, Which makes it near impossible to get a single slot card.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

HIS ATI HD4850 512MB Video Card (3DMark06 +13,000)
Asus ATI HD4850 Video card

So, you get no nvidia makers? because Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and gainward are NOT cheaper cards. In fact I would rather have one of those brands than an EVGA or BFG. (Excluded XFX since they sell ATI cards now)

Also, I buy all my items online too so dont complain. I live 200 miles from the closest PC store and most of the items are very overpriced compared to their online counterparts.

End of story.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Still shitloads more expensive, and crap anyways.
No HDMI output, wtf is that.
Also, it helps if those type of websites are known about
Also, Asus, MSI and Gigabyte sell hell cheap cards, i could have gotten a Gigabyte or XpertVision 8800GT when I got mine, for 333, Asus was 340, the other brands were all like 400+
I would rather an EVGA or BFG, more fancy frills then the other brands, and fancy frills are good, it saves me from buying them down the track, like adapters for s-video to AVA

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Many graphics cards support HDMI, but use an adaptor.

Re: X58 motherboard question
 

Adaptor's don't adapt the signal, they adapt the port, Its what im currently running, DIV - HDMI and then HDMI - DVI (for the lcd)
I have noticed increased quality, but the same color banding exists aswell as many of the other DVI floors.

I don't see many new single slot cards, let alone single slot cards with HDMI output port. I mainly see the nVidia dual slots (200 series mostly) with HDMI output, Another reason I rather nVidia, not just for price and performance and quality.