Questions on multi cored intel processors.

[Mac Daddy]

Originally Posted by Chai

Abit IP35 Pro is an excellent board, one of the best overclockers, comes with 2 PCIE slots, and it's quite a bargain. Proven by me and Max_87.

Just curious Chai on the Gigabyte P35 board I posted the link for a member on another board couldn't use any of the 3 x PCI-E x 1 slots while using two video cards. He had a device he needed on PCI-E x 1 and had to upgrade to the X38 version.

Just curious if this board is the same way or in fact its a characteristic of the P35 BIOS ...

[Max_87]

Originally Posted by silverhawk_184

my new board list: in the order of what i want
-ASUS P5K-E $147.78
-ABIT IP35 Pro $149.54
-ASUS P5K DELUXE $189.99
-Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 $178.00
-asus commando $205.09
-GA-X38-DQ6 $268.90
-asus striker extreme $249.00
-eVGA 680i $148.05 (although ive heard some people had trouble with quads, ?)

if someone can/wants to reorder it for me please do so, remeber its for my church so im on a budget

Then it's easy. Abit IP35 Pro is easily the best choice out of the 3 cheapest boards that you listed.

[ChampionLLY]

I'm tempted to change my p5b-e plus

[silverhawk_184]

thanks very much guys, and not a moment too early, lol, newegg just launched a new special today now the board is only 143.99 shipped.

just to be sure; the 4x pci-e wont hurt me. i will only be using that card for powerpoints and projector stuff, but occasionally it might contain some dvds and dx3d or openGL stuff

[Mac Daddy]

Should be fine the second PCI-E x 16 that runs @ x4 I think was meant for dual cards and monitors as opposed to Crossfire.

I didn't hear feedback from Max or Chai so I am assuming this mobo is fine as long as you aren't using the PCI-E x 1 slot now or in the future.

Good choices and best of luck

[Max_87]

Originally Posted by silverhawk_184

thanks very much guys, and not a moment too early, lol, newegg just launched a new special today now the board is only 143.99 shipped.

just to be sure; the 4x pci-e wont hurt me. i will only be using that card for powerpoints and projector stuff, but occasionally it might contain some dvds and dx3d or openGL stuff

Yup, it doesn't matter in your case, since you won't be running CrossFire/SLI. So which mainboard did you choose? IP35 Pro?

Should be fine the second PCI-E x 16 that runs @ x4 I think was meant for dual cards and monitors as opposed to Crossfire.

I didn't hear feedback from Max or Chai so I am assuming this mobo is fine as long as you aren't using the PCI-E x 1 slot now or in the future.

Good choices and best of luck

Can't comment on that, cause I don't have any PCI-E x1 card. But so far I haven't heard of such issue on Abit IP35 Pro.

[Mac Daddy]

Originally Posted by Max_87

Can't comment on that, cause I don't have any PCI-E x1 card. But so far I haven't heard of such issue on Abit IP35 Pro.

OK would be curious to know the member running the other P35 board was running Crossfire with 2 x HD3870. So not sure if it was Crossfire or the second slot physically being used. Reason I mentioned this is that device on PCI-E x 1 was an audio or some kind of video capture device. Since this system is used for graphics wanted to make sure that slot would work if he used similar.

If not no biggie and hope it works out silverhawk

[Max_87]

Did some googling, I believe this is the issue that you were referring to:

When utilizing CrossFire on this board, the two PCI Express x1 slots will be disabled by the BIOS.

Welcome to AnandTech.com [ Article: Foxconn MARS: God of War Performance?]

For Abit IP35 Pro:

One other thing is that if you do decide to go with the PCI-E RAID card idea:
1) the abit seems to be more compatible/less hassle
2) the Asus will disable it's PCI-E x1 slots whereas the abit won't due to the lanes being configured differently.

Opinion on Abit IP35 Pro or other recommendation...

By using PCI LAN on the Pro(the IP35-E & plain IP35 use PCI-E LAN) it means that you can use the x16 PCI-E slot & the x4 PCI-E slot & still have another x1 PCI-E slot active (the last PCI-E lane on the chipset is used for the JMicron) for use with a wifi card, soundcard etc.
Other boards from competitors disable other PCI-E slots when the x16 & x4 are used to their capacity.

AnandTech: abit IP35-Pro: Houston, We Have a Winner

So I think it's safe to say IP-35 Pro is void of this issue.

[Mac Daddy]

Excellent and Cheers on the info Max just wanted to make sure this wasn't an issue for our member building this system.

On ASUS I know they cascade the PCI-E slots on some P35 mobos this gives the second slot an actual speed of x8 instead of x4. I wonder if thats what the Gigabyte board was doing because running 2 HD370's he was getting 50k+ on 3DMark3 with the P35 and 60k+ with the X38. Aside from the PCI-E x 1 issues the P35 worked very well in Crossfire

[silverhawk_184]

thankyou all