Another X48 Vs P45

C

Compequip

New Member
OK guys here is the deal. I've been looking to build my first high end pc. I did my homework (thanks to some of you here) and was ready to buy, and honestly because I'm FRUGAL I've been waiting for the Q9550 price to drop. We'll I decided to go ahead and start the buy, but I took a trip last week and didn't want to order because of the MIR's <~~~~ I hate these things just give me the discount.... We'll I get back and some items I was looking at went up in price. So now I get to my point on the Mobo. All the threads I read tell me the X48 is a better performer than the P45. My question is simply this, do I really need the X48 for 100.00 more. I've been deciding between ASUS and Gigabyte mobo. I'm using the machine for basic internet surfing, business use, music and little gaming like CS and my daughters like to play WOW. The specs. on the machine are as follows

Case - undecided now was Antec 900 for 79.99 after MIR Price went up
Q9450 $299.00
2 2GB ram G Skill PC8500 $104.00
WD 640 GB HD $89.99
ATI 4850 Asus possibly add one more down the road? $157.99
OCZ 700 Gamextreme PSU $89.99
Creative Labs soundblaster 7.1 $45.92

The MOBO is what I need help on to way the price vs performance

Asus Rampage Formula $289.00
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 $225.00
or the
Asus P5Q Deluxe $195.25

I'm open to other Mobo's but I here alot of good things about Gigabyte and Asus and I tend to go with brand recognition.

Thanks in advance for all your time and help...:)

Sincerely,

Newb Monster
 
Compequip said:
ATI 4850 Asus possibly add one more down the road? $157.99

The MOBO is what I need help on to way the price vs performance

Asus Rampage Formula $289.00
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 $225.00
or the
Asus P5Q Deluxe $195.25
Click to expand...

You basically answered yourself

You say you might want to crossfire, then get the X48. If you crossfire, it will be x16 in both lanes, and not x16 & x8

the x8 will hinder crossfire performance.

And the Gigabyte is only $30 more for a 'high' end mobo
 
it doesn't sound like this comp you're building will be used for anything too demanding. music, surfing, and CS/WoW are really basic stuff so you really done need high end parts. i'm basing all this on your statement of being FRUGAL.

it doesn't look like you'll be playing crisis maxed out or anything, so a 4850 is actually overkill. but since it worth every penny for performance, i guess that justifies getting it :D however, if you want even more powerful GPU, i would always get a single faster card as opposed to two slower card in crossfire/SLI. double cards always present the problem of driver issues and hassle. it also follows the principle of diminishing returns, meaning adding another card will not double your performance. if you're a frugal person, multiple video cards is definitely not a good performance/price ratio.

and if you decide to only get 1 video card, a really good mobo for that would be asus p5q-E. you probably wont notice any difference between p5q deluxe and p5q-E unless you're an enthusiast wanting to exploit every BIOS feature. but as far as performance goes, save yourself that $130 on mobo difference between p5q-E vs rampage. even if you do decide to add another video card down the road, crossfire will run at x8, which is still perfectly fine. if you look at any benchmarks out there, crossfire running at x8 vs x16 on an x38/x48 mobo will show only marginal differences and performance. again, i dont think you'll be trying to squeeze every ounce of speed for world records or anything, so i really think a p45 mobo will be fine and save you some a lot of money
 
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Wow this is not one sided is it? One says go basic, one says x48, one says p45 and one say SLI.... HEHE I didn't see this coming. I see the Asus for $195.00 and say for $30.00 more I can get the X48 Gigabyte and for another $64.00 on top of that I'll get the Asus Rampage. I'm gonna wait for a few others to chime in but I'm now leaning towards a happy medium with the gigabyte X48 for $225.00. I didn't even think of running 1 really high end card vs 2 med end cards. I just assume to run one 4850 because of price then maybe a year down the road when the 4850 drops to under 100.00 buy another and crossfire. Wouldn't 2 4850 be better than 1 4870?
 
Compequip said:
Wow this is not one sided is it? One says go basic, one says x48, one says p45 and one say SLI.... HEHE I didn't see this coming. I see the Asus for $195.00 and say for $30.00 more I can get the X48 Gigabyte and for another $64.00 on top of that I'll get the Asus Rampage. I'm gonna wait for a few others to chime in but I'm now leaning towards a happy medium with the gigabyte X48 for $225.00. I didn't even think of running 1 really high end card vs 2 med end cards. I just assume to run one 4850 because of price then maybe a year down the road when the 4850 drops to under 100.00 buy another and crossfire. Wouldn't 2 4850 be better than 1 4870?
Click to expand...

2 4850s run EXTREMELY well.

They are just as good as 2 4870s in some games...

Thats why i say get the X48. Cause if you gonna CF, then you will want full performance.

If you not gonna CF,then get the P45
 
I personally choose Mobo chipset for intel as follows:

Crossfire = X48
SLi = 780i

Single video card:
No RAID = P43
RAID = P45

Very low budget: P31

Onboard video: NVIDIA GeForce 7100 or 7150/nForce 630i
 
daisymtc said:
I personally choose Mobo chipset for intel as follows:

Crossfire = X48
SLi = 780i

Single video card:
No RAID = P43
RAID = P45

Very low budget: P31

Onboard video: NVIDIA GeForce 7100 or 7150/nForce 630i
Click to expand...


What exactly is RAID? I here about it, but don't know what it is.

Thanks
 
"redundant array of inexpensive drives" theres several different types, the most common you'll find at home are raid zero which is striping, its like having 1 hard drive of the combined capacity and speed of how many you have(i dont know of the capacity thing) but it offers no redundancy which means if one of the drives fails you lose all information, and raid five requires a minimum of 3 drives, and you will lose the capacity of one of the drives to gain redundancy, but its basically raid 0 with a backup, but only one of the drives can fail without losing all your information
 
like i said before, for what you'll be doing, you wont even notice a difference between an x48 and p45. asus p5q-pro is decent, but a little more money can get you the p5q-E at only $160, which is a noticeable improvement and worth every penny. if you step up to a gigabyte x48, it's another $65 with no noticeable gains on that p5q-E. but hey, its your money and frugal goes out the door. what are you doing with crossfire when you most demanding application is WoW?? one more thing is to please look at the bandwidth benchmarks when looking at crossfire on a p45 vs crossfire on a x48. almost no difference at all. so you can go ahead and waste money on crossfire and overkill motherboard. frugal goes out the door, but at least you get bragging rights
 
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