Need Some Motherboard Advice Please

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PetAT

218 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 10

Topic # 64481 16-Jul-2010 11:45

Hi, I need some advice

I currently have a ASUS P5QL PRO, have been using it for an year and I wanted a better or equal board with a decent price tag, something that delivers, and might be a bit better for slight overclocking of the CPU etc..Nothing fancy,,

One of the reasons I want to change is because this Mobo has only 1x PCI Express Slot..

I wanted to run 2x Graphics Cards, I was leaning more towards Having a ATI and a nVIdia Hybrid setup( using the nVidia as the physx engine and the ATI as the primary card. That way I have the best of both worlds.

It must Have Support for

Intel Quad Core

8 GB or More Ram (2GB x 4Slots to house my existing memory),

2x PCI E SLOTS

Better or Equal to ASUS P5QL PRO

GavRoars

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 353102 18-Jul-2010 20:57

Hi I saw your question on Trademe and thought I'd give you my two cents worth. I have got an Asus P5N-D motherboard (two actually as I brought a second one as a back-up should my 1st one ever have any problems) and it works excellently. Runs both Core 2 Duo as well as Core 2 Quad CPUs, up to 8GB RAM (although only rated for PC-6400 RAM I have it running PC-8500 (you need to set up the RAM manually thru the bios for this). The reason I first brought this was due to it having 2PCI Express 2.0 X 16 (allowing SLI at full X16 lanes on both sockets) which is excellent. I would definitely recommend this motherboard to you
Cheers
Gavin

PetAT

218 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 10

Reply # 353115 18-Jul-2010 21:48

Hi, thanks for that...does that Mobo support crossfire / ATi cards as well as SLI? and do you think the mobo would be okay with running a ATi card and a Nvidia? Making it the hybrid ?

kyhwana2

2450 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 147

Reply # 353134 18-Jul-2010 22:52

I believe that nvidia drivers don't allow you to do physx's with another non-nvidia card installed in the system. (Yes it's dumb, but it's nvidia)

Also some versions of windows dont let you have multiple video drivers installed at the same time, so you might want to check that too,

GavRoars

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 353224 19-Jul-2010 08:49

Hi I found this link which talks about using NVidia and ATI cards in Physx

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1362038

Also P5N-D only allows SLI (as far as I'm aware unless there's been a bios update recently).
I'm using Windows 7 with this motherboard in SLI and it runs excellently (now!) When Windows 7 was first released the SLI drivers were a bit of a problem occasionally but they have caught up with things now. I'm not sure about Vista or XP though. One thing you need to be careful with which I'm sure your aware of is that you have a decent powersupply for SLI. There's a link below for PSU calculators.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=125165

Cheers,
Gavin

PetAT

218 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 10

Reply # 353630 19-Jul-2010 21:30

Thanks a lot I will be looking into the information and see if I can bypass the nVidia ATi GPU disable thing by using diffrent drivers as said on some sites..