I am about to switch from AMD to Intel's Core 2 Duo. What is the best
motherboard for this chip? I really want to buy Asus but if you have other
ideas please tell me.

atlantica wrote:
Dear Atlantica,

among the best motherboards for the C2D:

ASUS P5W DH DELUXE/WIFI-AP Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel
Motherboard - Retail

$269.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131025

Intel's "Bad Axe"--975 chipset, lots of features, stable.

Intel BOXD975XBXLKR Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard
$269.99
$6.94 Three Day Shipping (Not available in HI, AK and PR)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121016


ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel
Motherboard - Retail

$239.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131028



Foxconn 975X7AA-8EKRS2H Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel
Motherboard - Retail

$199.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186097



ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe Socket T (LGA 775) NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX
Intel Motherboard - Retail

$234.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131031

I notice this one gets pretty tepid reviews at Newegg:

ASUS P5B Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard -
Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131030

Weekend Sale
$144.99


Intel 965 chipset motherboards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&srchInDes c=

Some more:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&srchInDes c=

P5W DH will definitely ship with a BIOS that supports C2D; need a 304
or better revision for the Intel Bad Axe, but from what I have seen,
they have been shipping with that for several weeks now.

My personal recommendation, free, and well worth it, either the Bad Axe
Intel board, or the P5W DH. Both look great.

Here are these two compared feature by feature:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131025

HTH,

BC

BC wrote:
Since we're in an overclocking group, I can't understand why you'd recommend
an Intel board. Intel boards usually have no overclocking options at all.
The Asus is highly recommended in this aspect.

If you don't want to overclock, either will serve you well, but if you want
to, the Asus is the only option of these two...

--
Grtz,
Thomas.

Thomas wrote:
Dear Thomas,

I do not have a Conroe or 975 motherboard, so I cannot speak from
experience, but I did read that the Bad Axe can be overclocked:

***quote***

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/380/3/

With the Intel D975XBX motherboard ($235) easily performing better than
any Intel desktop motherboard produced it's no wonder many enthusiasts
are picking up reference Intel boards for the first time ever.

*** end quote ***

Note: this article shows a very simple mod to make it possible to
overclock lower priced "locked" Conroes.

***quote***

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=2681&p=13

Intel D975XBX: Intel brings their Bad-Axe to Market
Intel D975XBX: Intel brings their Bad-Axe to Market
Date: January 26th, 2006

Topic: Motherboard
Manufacturer: Intel
Author: Gary Key

The Intel D975XBX is an interesting solution for the Intel Enthusiast at
this time. The performance of the board was average or below in all
testing phases while stability was superb. In fact, unless we were
overclocking the board past its obvious limits, we never experienced any
stability issues. Unlike other boards reviewed recently, we did not find
any test issues with our peripheral inventory. The Intel D975XBX
exemplifies Intel's trend of offering very stable and secure board
solutions with excellent documentation and support.

Overclocking quote: ***

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2681&p=4

This board is a decent overclocker considering the limited settings
available in the BIOS. At these overclock settings, the system was able
to complete all of our benchmark test suites three consecutive times and
run Prime95 and SuperPI without issue. We were able to overclock the FSB
to 260 at the 16x multiplier, which resulted in CPU operation of
4160MHz, but we could not complete our test suite. We also were able to
raise the CPU multiplier to 21 at the 200 FSB setting, which resulted in
the CPU operation of 4200MHz, but it could not run any tests reliably.

***end quote***

Another guide on modifying board slightly for overclocking:

***

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=3766

Guides : Overclocking : Intel 975XBX, A Pencil & a Better Overclock!
The Intel 975XBX Board has risen in popularity in the past few months,
not just among the mainstream users but also among the enthusiast and
overclockers. As a motherboard targeted at the mainstream consumers
however, it is quite limited in the voltage options offered in the BIOS,
particularly the Memory Voltage. Shaky hands and the soldering iron is a
big risk for a hard modification... perhaps you can handle a sharpened
pencil better instead?

***

and again:

***

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...&articID=4 70



Overclocking - Introduction

The Intel Bad Axe desktop mainboard supports some basic overclocking
options. Most important to mention is that the clock speed can be raised
with 30%; in steps of 1%. The classic FSB option is nowhere to be found.
Besides that there are also the following overclocking related settings
in the BIOS:

# Enhanced power slope; Enabled / Disabled
# Host Burn-in Mode Type; Positive / Negative
# Host Burn-in Mode percentage; from 0 to 30 in steps of 1
# FSB Frequency override; 533/800/1067
# PCI Burn-in Mode; Default / 40.00 Mhz
# PCI Express Burn-in Mode; Default or from 1001 to 109 in steps of ~1.3 Mhz
# MCH Voltage Override; Default / 1.525 V / 1.600 V / 1.650 V / 1.725 V
# Front Side Bus Override Voltage; Default / 1.271V / 1.333 V / 1.395 V

Madshrimps (c) Madshrimps (c) Madshrimps (c) Madshrimps (c)

That’s a limited selection and with only these there is no way to reach
some insane clock speeds. Luckily a larger selection is available but
it’s hidden, yet it easily be unlocked.

The OC debug mode lets you change a wider range of settings, it even
becomes “pre-unlocked” with some Core 2 processors. To manually unlock
the OC debug mode you need to do the following.

Just above the IDE port you can find a three-pins header with jumper.
This is used for BIOS maintenance. But notice, just above that there are
three unused solder points. Contact the first two (with solder of
conductive paint) and now your entire BIOS is unlocked.

***

http://www.nordichardware.com/Articl...&skrivelse=487

As the host for our project we have Intel's own motherboard, D975XBX,
nicknamed "Bad Axe". Bad Axe was partly one of the first motherboards to
officially support Intel's new processors and partly one of the first
motherboards from Intel that allowed significant overclocking. It's not
really "Plug 'n' Play" though, but to activate all of these settings you
had to move a jumper on the motherboard. This might not sound all that
bad, but Intel chose to make it a bit tricky by not soldering any pins
for you place the jumper on. Time to bring out the soldering iron and
fix this.


Conroe overclock database:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1075792

Looks like the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 does well...
About 8 overclocked P5Ws for every "Bad Axe", at least in this group....

Agree that Asus makes overclocking much easier. But, Intel does have a
history of making stable, reliable, high quality motherboards too...

HTH,

BC

atlantica wrote:
Dear Atlantica,

new article on the Asus P5B Deluxe:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2837&p=4

Asus Core 2 Duo motherboards reviewed:

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?p=1912730

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...ookie%5Ftest=1

New P5W DH review at HardOCP

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

And, I saw a review comparing the 975, 965, nVidia 570 and 590, and the
965 was considered to be the best--but, I can't find that link right
now...P5B Deluxe...

HTH,

BC

Thanks to evryone here. really, really helpful.


Paul


"BC" <bc (AT) bc (DOT) com> wrote