Motherboard/Ram advice question

[kirel123]

Hello...

I am building the core of a new system, while using some parts from an older system.

The main purpose of the new system will be gaming, however I do watch movies and do programing tasks on the computer as well.
I don't expect a massive increase in FPS with most current games, since most current games don't tax my current system. The purpose of the upgrade is to ensure future upgradability, while jumping up in CPU/RAM from my current 2 year old configuration.

Currently, I am using:
Asus A8n32SLI motherboard
AMD 64x2 4800+(toledo core)
GTS8800 640mb (g80 core)
Creative XFI (gamers ed)


I will be re-using the GFX and Sound cards.

I have already purchased and will be using
A pair of WD Raptors (HDD) in Raid 0.
a Q9450 quad core CPU

I plan to overclock to at least 3ghz

I need to purchase a motherboard and 4gb of RAM (whatever works with the Motherboard)

My question pertains to the motherboard and to future compatibility with future gfx cards.

Generally, I don't SLI - Instead, I tend to go for a single card. But I am interested in making sure that whatever mainboard I buy is PCIEx16 2.0 compliant, so that my next gen vid card (whenever nvidia gets around to selling us the next gen stuff << and the 9800gx2 - isn't next gen stuff >> ) .

As such, I've been looking at the 700 series of Nvidia. But I keep seeing people having major issues with pretty much all of the 700 series boards (750/780/790) - problems with video corruption when watching movies via WMP, Youtube, WinDVD - etc...


In the opinion of those here;
- how prevelant is that 700 series problem?
- how serious is the heat problem of the X38/x48 boards?

And a followup - with a budget of ~$450 for a mainboard/4gb Ram, knowing that I want to overclock a little bit. What would you all suggest and why?

 

[VulcanX]

ASUS BLITZ EXTREME REPUBLIC OF GAMERS MB-ABE
This is what you looking for in mu opinion, im a huge fan of Asus and dunno if thats decent or not in the OC world, but im happy with stability and ability to OC so far, and as far as RAID 5 goes, this supports it, supports DDR3 which is your next generation, and its a gaming board, hence republic of gamers, i think you will find this more than suitable for your requirements, anyone have anything to say regarding this board or anything i am not yet aware of etc
Hope it all works out for you

 

[VulcanX]

One problem you would run into is that it supports Xfire instead of SLI in your particular case, so maybe look into that series, but obviously not that specific model, sorry for mis information, just wanted to point you in the Asus republic of gamers direction

 

[Curr]

There's a heat problem with the X38/X48 series boards?

I did some pretty thorough reading on the X48 series and never found mention of any problems related to this.

My X48, while "only" running at a mild overclock of 20% (E8400 @ 3.6GHz, 1.25Vcore), has no heat "problems" whatsoever. Temps are no hotter than my past 680i SLI board that I was using.

In fact, I'm sort of surprised my temps didn't go up more. I went from an HR-03 cooled 8800GTX to a stock HSF 9800GX2, similar CPU/HSF (E6600-Tuniq / E8400-HDTS1283).

If you aren't going to SLI, then it's a no-brainer to go with one of the Intel chipsets, they are more stable and more mature than the nVidia ones these days. Find one that has the doodads and widgets you want and go for it.