C2D: Dual PCI Express x16 Board - Not Crippled

[Trav2003]

I'm looking for a C2D motherboard with 2 x16 PCI Express card slots because I'll be running 3 monitors (possibly) and it looks like a lot of them have a crippled secondary PCI Express card slot (x4).

Are there any solid sub $150 motherboards that don't have a crippled secondary PCI x16 card slot that I can use two cards in (8600GT, 7300GT).

Thanks,
Travis

[James]

Not quite yet.

The problem is the only chipsets with "full" PCIe x16 dual slots are the performance chipsets, X38 and x48.

I may be wrong, but I am not recalling any other chipsets that offer what you are looking for.

[fist]

well crippled or not , 7300GT wont be that much cripled on PCIe4x bandwidth it is a low end card. I doubt 7300GT needs more than PCIe4x bandwidth in anyway.

Edit: If you insist , you can check low end SLI mobo like the 750i, 650i or a cheap 680i SLI mobo from nvidia

750i is 2x 16x or 1x 16 2x 8 , 650i is one 8 and one 8 , 680i is 2 16 and one 8x

Links :

Asus 750i

2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
- Single VGA mode: x16
- SLI mode: Hardware ready for x16, x16
2 x PCIe x1
2 x PCI 2.2

MSI 750i

Three PCI Express x16 slots
- the mazarine slot PCI Express x 16 slot (PCI_E1) supports PCIE 2.0 x 16 mode.
- the two light-blue PCI Express x 16 slots (PCI_E2 & PCI_E3) support PCI Express x 8 mode only.
- supports SLI technology.

new egg for 750i

680i are getting cheaper and they support 2 16x and one more 8x :

680i

[kpxgq]

i wouldnt touch an nvidia C2D motherboard with a 12 foot pole... id rather go with a P35 with PCI based video cards

[Trav2003]

i wouldnt touch an nvidia C2D motherboard with a 12 foot pole... id rather go with a P35 with PCI based video cards

Please Explain. I did wind up going with a P35 board though. I got the ABIT IP35 Pro - I'll run my 7300GT at 4x and my 8600GT at 16x on that board... Should work well enough methinks.

[fist]

i wouldnt touch an nvidia C2D motherboard with a 12 foot pole... id rather go with a P35 with PCI based video cards

well I dont care about rumors,

Dell has been using nvidia chipset on their Top of the line XPS Gaming Machines for 2 years now and yes H2C cooled and factory overclocked too :

XPS730(790iultra chipset) ,

XPS720(680i)

add to it the XPS630 (650i)


HP also chosen nvidia the ASUS Striker Supreme (nv680i) mobo for thier blackbird02 which is FACTORY WATER COOLED and OVERCLOCKED ...

I dont think Dell or HP would sell anything unstable or that bad...

SOME HOW they BOTH managed to run CROSS FIRE on nvidia SLI mobo too!!!!!!

FROM DELL XPS 730 specs :

ATI Graphics
Designed to support the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture with two x16 graphics cards slots, the NVIDIA nForce® 790i Ultra SLITM will support single, dual and Quad Graphics solutions, from both NVIDIA and ATI, for sizzling graphics speeds leading to a truely immersive gaming experience.
NVIDIA SLITM technology is a revolutionary platform innovation that allows you to intelligently scale graphics performance by combining multiple NVIDIA® graphics solutions in a single system with an NVIDIA nForce® SLITM MCP.
ATI CrossFireXTM multi-GPU technology takes your gaming experience to unforeseeable heights with more scalability, higher performance and compatibility for unparalleled visual thrills than ever before.

from HP BlackBird02 specs

Graphics and Displays
Two Doublewide, 16-lane PCI Express graphics slot with one or more of the following graphic cards installed:

* NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 SDRAM, supports Dual-Link DVI
* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, with 768MB of GDDR3 SDRAM supports Dual-Link DVI (available with liquid cooling)
* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ULTRA, with 768MB of GDDR3 SDRAM supports Dual-Link DVI (available with liquid cooling)

* ATI RADEON HD3870 XT, with 512MB of GDDR3 SDRAM, supports Dual-Link DVI (available with liquid-cooling)
* ATI RADEON HD3870 X2, with 1GB of GDDR4 SDRAM, supports Dual-Link DVI



Supports both ATI Crossfire and NVDIA SLI multiple graphic card configurations

[nails]

Thats the problem with these chipsets... They suck balls for overclocking on air. The 720hc and the blackbird are both water cooled, and thus the ridiculous heat issues are not as bad. Believe me, I know firsthand how finicky these boards are on air, with the cpu dropping to 6x out of the blue with all throttling options disabled in bios. I could hear the poor board squeal under pressure when i'm pushing more than 1.4v vcore, its pwm and northbridge run way too hot.

[fist]

Thats the problem with these chipsets... They suck balls for overclocking on air. The 720hc and the blackbird are both water cooled, and thus the ridiculous heat issues are not as bad. Believe me, I know firsthand how finicky these boards are on air, with the cpu dropping to 6x out of the blue with all throttling options disabled in bios. I could hear the poor board squeal under pressure when i'm pushing more than 1.4v vcore, its pwm and northbridge run way too hot.

hmm interesting..

u know , they managed to run crossfire on nvidia SLI chipset I wonder if someone smart enough can do the same for Intel X48 allowing SLI on it ..

[nails]

theres nothing to it except drivers, it was no special effort on their part, all that happened was amd gave them a custom driver that includes an nvidia chipset in its crossfire profile. its a matter of marketing and keeping users tied to their platform, though amd did license crossfire to intel.

nvidia goes through great efforts to secure their drivers, and will sue the pants off of anybody who circumvents that protection. i would love for an intel chipset with sli, but 790i isn't bad, so when its prices as well as ddr3 come down, nvidia chipsets won't be that bad anymore.

[fist]

theres nothing to it except drivers, it was no special effort on their part, all that happened was amd gave them a custom driver that includes an nvidia chipset in its crossfire profile. its a matter of marketing and keeping users tied to their platform, though amd did license crossfire to intel.

nvidia goes through great efforts to secure their drivers, and will sue the pants off of anybody who circumvents that protection. i would love for an intel chipset with sli, but 790i isn't bad, so when its prices as well as ddr3 come down, nvidia chipsets won't be that bad anymore.

hmm strange we cant find NV mobos with Crossfire support from Asus,EVGA,XFX , etc

I mean this mite boost the sales...

one of the reason people like nvidia chipset is not only the SLI , but the more PCIe lanes , u can add 2 full PCIe16x 2.0 cards in SLI AND a 8x PCIE Raid card.

you cant do this with any Intel chipset outside the expensive workstation 5400x one which is waaay expensive. and now we have Nvidia mobos with onboard SAS chips with Raid support... I love it!!! 15krpm are still better and cheaper option than SSD

[Nater]

I used an ASSUS 680i board and I hated it. The northbridge was scorching hot, it didn't overclock quads worth a damn, and it wasn't the most stable board to begin with. The only good thing about it is nVidia smokes intel when it comes to memory controller performance and memory overclocking. Those two aren't the biggest concern to me. I'd much rather have a 3.5GHz Quad with DDR2-800 CL4 than DDR2-1066 CL4 and a 2.7GHz quad.

I've heard that the 790i is actually a pretty solid chipset, but it's definitely out of most people's price range. Maybe at the end of the year, if nVidia is still on top in GPU performance, I'll buy an '890i' for LGA1366. Yeah, I'm saving up for a big end of the year build. Nehalem EE with 12GB of DDR3 and two of the best GPUs out. Not sure what I'll do for storage, but a VelociRaptor or three will definitely be used.

[stang10001]

Thats the problem with these chipsets... They suck balls for overclocking on air. The 720hc and the blackbird are both water cooled, and thus the ridiculous heat issues are not as bad. Believe me, I know firsthand how finicky these boards are on air, with the cpu dropping to 6x out of the blue with all throttling options disabled in bios. I could hear the poor board squeal under pressure when i'm pushing more than 1.4v vcore, its pwm and northbridge run way too hot.

um i believe that you have a bad mobo or bad chip then cause i am easily getting 3.139 GHz on my 570 SLI. i was able to go to 2.6 GHz @ stock vcore