daisymtc

680i run SLI at PCI-E x16
650i run SLI at PCI-E x 8

So he need 680i chipset.

daisymtc

If you not in hurry. Wait until DDR3 RAM release. I think is 2007 Q3.
Or get MB with Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R. I think it support both DDR2 and DDR3 RAM. But I don't think it has 2 x PCIEx16 and the performance of intel P35 chipset is still unknown

Froboy7391_99

The difference between x8 and x16 is not very much I heard you can barely notice the difference

__________________

Dell Inspiron 1520
Core 2 Duo T5450 1.66Ghz
2 Gb DDR2-667
Nvidia 8600m GT
250Gb HDD
15.4" 1280x800//DVD Burner//Vista Home Premium//Expresso Brown

Kurtdg21

Yea after reading up a bit further on the difference in video performance betweeen the 680i and 650i, both boards are so close that I don't think its worth going with a 680i board atm.

After searching a bit more on some 650i boards I came across this one on newegg.

MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail 156.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130081

I don't have much experience with MSI boards and I was wondering what you all thought about it? It seems to get great reviews. I love the look of the copper heat sinks and cooling pipes, and it supports quad and extreme cpu's for possible future upgrades.

Think I'm also going to tag a C2D E6420 in it. All in all I'll be going over my $1000 budget by about $80, but I think it will be worth it.

So what do you all think? Fast responses appreciated hehe as I plan on buying all this within the next day

Maddhatter

i was going to go with a similar board (different brand) but it seemed to me like those cooling pipes would get int he way of the pci express slot(s). Maybe not tho other than that seems like a solid board if you're planning to SLi. also i've heard MSi boards are quite picky about the type of ram used this may or may not be true but well worth looking into before making a final purchase.

__________________
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz
PSU: Rosewill 400W
Ram: G.Skill 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
GPU: Ati Radeon x1800xt 256 mb
OS: Windows XP Professional 64 bit

Kurtdg21

Yea I was wondering about that myself, but much to my suprise there was a review posted that has the same exact ram I'll be buying and he said it runs great with it, so hopefully it'll work out to plan. I'm sure the gpu will fit, whether how hard it'll be to get in there, i'm hoping not hehe.

Thanks for the quick response Maddhatter

Kurtdg21

Alrighty, just wanna say as of last night I ordered everything for my new setup

I'm thinking it'll arrive on tuesday, so hopefully nothing is damaged and I'll be up and going in no time!

Thanks again everyone for the help

Kurtdg21

After about 3hrs later and its done!! Definately a good sign for a first time builder hehe. I spent most of the time trying to figure out how I was going to posistion the cables, and get the front mounted audio inputs to reach the pins on the mb.

After I finished installing xp (talk about working the optical drives eject button out) I installed all the drivers and its up and running about as good as I could have possibly planned it.

I checked the cpu and gpus temps with tat and nvidia coolant temp monitor.

30C for the cpu during idle with tat
44C for the gpu
seems pretty good

It was a bit strange when I first booted it up. I went to the bios to check the cpu temps for a few minutes, making sure they wouldn't jump, thankfully they didn't. But after that I went browsing around an bit and noticed my cpu clock speed was at 2.997ghz as compared to the E6420s 2.14ghz rated speed.

Then after installing xp pro i went back into the bios to check the cpu speed and it went down to 2.14? I thought that was strange, would it maybe it have the potential?

I really dont know much about ocing to know if those clocks mean anything, so for now I think this setup is working exactly how I want it to

__________________
First Build! 3hrs and works ;)
MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 nForce 650i - MB
Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe- CPU
G.SKILL 2GB 6400CL5D - RAM
Pioneer 112D - Optical
WDC 16MB SATAII - HD
KINGWIN SK-523S - Case (looks good)
XCLIO SP 500W SLI - PSU
EVGA 7900GS KO - GPU (another coming :)
xp pro sp2 mce