a mobo ? for the techies here

[Flyby]

I need to select an x58 mobo and after looking at several reviews, I realize I don't know which synthetic test best translates to our combat flight sims. So I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone with knowledge of such a thing could sort this out. I've added a link to one mobo test that lists several tests used to gauge a mobo's prowess:
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/2080_6.html
Which among them would best represents the performance criteria most important to our genre?
No haters, or Neanderthal replies, please. ;)
thanks!
Flyby out

[ghodan]

3Dmark.

But a motherboard does not really effect the game performance in FPS count.
Max difrence you would see or get between high end ones (not talking about the budget mobo's) are not more then a few fps.
Max difrence i ever seen in a bench was 8 fps i think.

But thinks like overclocking cpu and gpu have mutch mutch more effect on your fps count in games.

[F19_lacrits]

If you know that you need a new x58 mobo then you should be looking at what features you need, like connectors etc., rather than looking for the x58 mobo that is the fastest. There is no huge difference in speed between different x58 mobo's, they almost only show in synthetic benchmarks and not in real world applications.
So, do you need onboard audio, SLI, CrossFire, SATA 6, USB 3, auto overclock features etc.. ?

[Flyby]

thanks for the replies, guys. I don't see where USB 3, or SATA 6 will impact me (unless there's a SATA 6 HDD out there; I'll do a search). Since I haven't decided on which GPU to get (Mr. Red or Mr. Green) I think dual-GPU support is important. I may start with one GPU, but I'll see which one works better doubled up for Oleg's new sim. Also, a medium overclock is in the cards, so the bios features supporting this feature is important. I'd like to use the KISS principle and use a few clicks versus challenging the timings, etc.
thanks again for the input. good stuff
Flyby out

[swiss]

Kiss?

Take a look at MSI's Auto OC Genie.
MSI Big Bang-XPower f.i.

[Flyby]

HI Swiss,
KISS(as in the KISS principle) is short for Keep It Simple, Stupid! Something we say to discourage making something more complex than it needs to be. It does not imply someone is stupid. Here's a Google page of a lot of definitions for the use of the term:
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=What+is+the+KISS+principle

Thanks for the tip abut MSI's overclock genie. I'll check it out. It's been a while since I've dealth with memory timings and such, so KISS applies to me! :D
Flyby out

[F19_lacrits]

I don't remember if it has an auto overclocking button like MSI, but I've only heard good and good value about the Asus Sabertooth X58.. 5 year warranty.. and it looks really nice!

[swiss]

Thanks for the tip abut MSI's overclock genie. I'll check it out. It's been a while since I've dealth with memory timings and such, so KISS applies to me! :D
Flyby out

I'm aware what KISS means, thats' why suggested an auto OC mobo. ;)

[Royraiden]

Look at the Asus and Gigabyte boards.

[Flyby]

Swiss, I misunderstood when you typed "Kiss?" I thought you did not know the meaning. No offense.
F19_lacrits, just this morning I added the Sabertooth to my list of possible mobos. Thanks!

Royraiden, of course I've looked at the Gigabyte offerings too. What I'll do is check the customer reviews on Newegg. Then I'll check a few over-clocking sites and see what I get learn there (I intend to perform a mild over-clock on my 17-920; about 3.5ghz or there abouts).
Flyby out

[Royraiden]

Swiss, I misunderstood when you typed "Kiss?" I thought you did not know the meaning. No offense.
F19_lacrits, just this morning I added the Sabertooth to my list of possible mobos. Thanks!

Royraiden, of course I've looked at the Gigabyte offerings too. What I'll do is check the customer reviews on Newegg. Then I'll check a few over-clocking sites and see what I get learn there (I intend to perform a mild over-clock on my 17-920; about 3.5ghz or there abouts).
Flyby out

You can overclock that cpu to 3.6ghz without even touching the voltages on my mobo and I think most x58's can do this.This is what I've been doing, I got my cpu to 3.9ghz but that requires a quite some voltage increase and changing a lot of values, so now that I dont need that much speed I went back to 3.6ghz with everything on stock.

[Fansadox]

Go for the X58 from gigabyte awsome motherboard.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2957#ov

[Oldschool61]

thanks for the replies, guys. I don't see where USB 3, or SATA 6 will impact me (unless there's a SATA 6 HDD out there; I'll do a search). Since I haven't decided on which GPU to get (Mr. Red or Mr. Green) I think dual-GPU support is important. I may start with one GPU, but I'll see which one works better doubled up for Oleg's new sim. Also, a medium overclock is in the cards, so the bios features supporting this feature is important. I'd like to use the KISS principle and use a few clicks versus challenging the timings, etc.
thanks again for the input. good stuff
Flyby out

What do you have now for hardware? Type ram etc. If you have ddr2 then go with a socket am2+ amd mobo. Dont let people BS you about DDR3 vs DDR2 the improvments are minimal. I would rather have 4 gigs of DDR2 than 2gigs of DDR3.

Lots of parts can be used in a new system saving you cash. AMD system much cheaper and run CoD just fine. If you have lots of cash to throw away go intel and get only slightly better performance.

[Heliocon]

Hey, what I have and I suggest is a rather expensive option BUT it will last you a very very long time and is upgradeble. I have a 4-way EVGA Classified x58 ATX mobo, I would suggest going for the 3-way sli though. If you are in to tech at all or think you will in the future, this board is awesome because you can OC super easy, has lots of room for additions, easy (comparably) to trouble shoot because it has a LED panel on it which if there is a problem, will give you a number corresponding to what is wrong. In addition you can turn parts of the board on or off, so if I have a memory problem or a gpu problem I can turn off the specific port/piece and by repeating this I can find the failed hardware (otherwise you would have to manually remove each piece and replace it by hand to trouble shoot). Also it has a lifetime warranty :)

[Heliocon]

What do you have now for hardware? Type ram etc. If you have ddr2 then go with a socket am2+ amd mobo. Dont let people BS you about DDR3 vs DDR2 the improvments are minimal. I would rather have 4 gigs of DDR2 than 2gigs of DDR3.

Lots of parts can be used in a new system saving you cash. AMD system much cheaper and run CoD just fine. If you have lots of cash to throw away go intel and get only slightly better performance.

Yes and no. Problem is DDR3 ram wont seem any faster if you have a crap harddrive which is needing to be paged and therefore bottlenecking the ram. If you get DDR2 prepare to upgrade in the next year because cpu clocks have begun to climb again and the new cpu's are 32nm which means you get a bigger benefit from high clocks.

[JAMF]

Wonder why you've chosen x58? You don't plan to put a faster CPU in your system in the future? Is it a system that'll be discarded?

[maclean525]

X58 Sabertooth from ASUS.

5 year warranty, PLENTY of overclocking options, USB 3 and SATA 6GB support. Only $190 at NewEgg right now. Great board. I paired it with an i7 950 that I run at 4GHz comfortably on air with a $40 CPU cooler.

[Flyby]

Wonder why you've chosen x58? You don't plan to put a faster CPU in your system in the future? Is it a system that'll be discarded?
First, thank you all for the additional replies. Much appreciated.

JAMF, I chose the X58 some months ago when I purchased a (then) new i7-920 processor. It's been my misfortune since then to put everything else on hold (again!!) for personal reasons (medical + $$ for the bills). Only now do I see light at the end of a very long tunnel. As luck would have it, just to share, I just had tissue samples taken from my lungs yesterday, and am awaiting biopsy results. Meanwhile, I dream of the day I can return to the virtual skies. My processor sits on a shelf while I get my health together.
Flyby out
PS, let me add that this forum has helped sustain my appreciation for IL2. I actually have IL2-1946, but have never had a gaming system to load it on (as mine crashed before it came out). I had bought all earlier versions concluding with Forgotten Battles and really got into online play with full-real settings. I also have Rise of Flight and Wings of Prey. Might as well support the genre, eh? ;)

Might as well ask about speedy hard drives. I don't think SSDs help gaming from waht I've read on the DCS forums. Can someone speak to a HDD that is SATA 6 rated? For gaming, is a smaller HDD better than a humongus (1TB) Hdd for accessing data? Or is the amopunt of cache ram more inmportant? Or both?

[Tacoma74]

Yes and no. Problem is DDR3 ram wont seem any faster if you have a crap harddrive which is needing to be paged and therefore bottlenecking the ram. If you get DDR2 prepare to upgrade in the next year because cpu clocks have begun to climb again and the new cpu's are 32nm which means you get a bigger benefit from high clocks.

Yes exactly. SSD's are the way of the future, and there are even a few SATA III versions floating around the market right now. I believe Crutial has a 64gb version out now for about $125 on Newegg. Is it necessary? Probably not really for gaming, but it will let you take advantage of all the fast and extremely cheap DDR3 RAM out there now days. I plan on investing in one when I upgrade my videocard/PSU here in a couple months.

As far as the Mobo goes, I've always had good luck with MSI products. Gigabyte also is very good. Very good price/performance and good reliability from what I've heard. And the x58 chipset should be pretty good for awhile yet. But once the H67/P67 chipsets get fixed, then that'll be the way to go for graphical performance. The Sandy Bridge processors are going to be awesome!! Be sure! I might even hold out for the Ivy Bridge series though...

Another something crazy to look forward to in the future:
http://www.techspot.com/news/41818-samsung-develops-ddr4-memory-up-to-40-more-efficient.html

[Oldschool61]

Yes exactly. SSD's are the way of the future, and there are even a few SATA III versions floating around the market right now. I believe Crutial has a 64gb version out now for about $125 on Newegg. Is it necessary? Probably not really for gaming, but it will let you take advantage of all the fast and extremely cheap DDR3 RAM out there now days. I plan on investing in one when I upgrade my videocard/PSU here in a couple months.

As far as the Mobo goes, I've always had good luck with MSI products. Gigabyte also is very good. Very good price/performance and good reliability from what I've heard. And the x58 chipset should be pretty good for awhile yet. But once the H67/P67 chipsets get fixed, then that'll be the way to go for graphical performance. The Sandy Bridge processors are going to be awesome!! Be sure! I might even hold out for the Ivy Bridge series though...

Another something crazy to look forward to in the future:
http://www.techspot.com/news/41818-samsung-develops-ddr4-memory-up-to-40-more-efficient.html

SSD instead of HDD will likely only lower your load times. It will have almost ZERO effect on your FPS.

[Tacoma74]

SSD instead of HDD will likely only lower your load times. It will have almost ZERO effect on your FPS.

Yes perhaps, but I also do alot of audio recording in my spare time. So faster read/write times will give me almost no latency when laying down tracks even at sample rates of up to 192khz. And not only that but it's also about reliability. HDDs have a short life expectancy when compared to an SSD. If spending the extra bit of cash to get several more years out of my drive than it seems a good investment to me. And besides, who wants to wait around waiting with stupid load screens anyways. Not this guy. :cool:

It really is the future for internal hard drives though. Once we see capacities go up and prices come down then everyone is going to start snagging these up.

[Wolf_Rider]

I need to select an x58 mobo and after looking at several reviews, I realize I don't know which synthetic test best translates to our combat flight sims. So I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone with knowledge of such a thing could sort this out. I've added a link to one mobo test that lists several tests used to gauge a mobo's prowess:
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/2080_6.html
Which among them would best represents the performance criteria most important to our genre?
No haters, or Neanderthal replies, please. ;)
thanks!
Flyby out


what you really should consider as well with any mobo, is reliability. Research and compare and especially check the various forums for faults which consistently show up

[Flyby]

what you really should consider as well with any mobo, is reliability. Research and compare and especially check the various forums for faults which consistently show up
way too many motherboards are produced for there not to be a lemon here and there. But there are sites to visit that will help me figure out the mobos with the best reliability, and waranty (ASUS?). That's a lot of reading, but choosing wisely also takes reliability into consideration.

Since I'm looking at a purely gaming rig (though I may load some programs on it) I don't see the need for an SSD yet. As for DDR4, that sounds like a new mobo chipset to me.

It's the old story of chasing the bottleneck. I guess CPUs will still be that bottleneck until they reach 9ghz on air cooling. By then there might even be DDR65. ;)

Flyby out

[Wolf_Rider]

Also consider that warranty needs to have good cutomer service as well.
What may look like an excellent warranty deal can be torn asunder by lousy back up... something else to take into account. Some out there give exceptional service, whilst others leave a lot to be desired.

best of luck though and let us know how you go

[Heliocon]

SSD are cool but atm too expensive for the amount of space imho. I went with a 2tb 7200rpm drive but it has a 64mb buffer so it runs at the speed of a 10000rpm/raptor. I thought it was the best rounded solution, maybe in a year or two I will go SSD.

[jameson]

Flyby,
In the recent interview in Russian, Oleg said this game likes memory, lots of it, both ram and on the graphics card. This in combination with a multicore cpu, the standard for which seems to be a 3ghz+ quad core, ROF runs better on one apparently, so by extention will CoD. We don't know if the game will utilise any more cores than that. Recent postings on this board have pointed out that it is problematic to write multithreaded applications anyway and in particular for flight sims, so newer hex or octo cored chips maybe a waste. 6gb of ram will be needed to run the game at highish settings is the impression I have at the moment. I do not know much of intel latest boards or setups but am contemplating an AMD rig, (Crosshair IV with a quad chip, 3.4ghz which will oc to around 3.8 on air with ease for less than cost than similar from intel. Adding two GPU's in crossfire should bang up the frame rate if (?) CoD scales well across two cards. Only real problem for me is whether the FFB stick forces can be tuned under windows 7 and buttons allocated.
Good luck with it, but I would advise waiting until the game is out and seeing how the land lies before commiting any hard earned. AMD are releasing a new ground up chip known as Bulldozer around April this year, I'm waiting to see how it performs and it's price (new socket thus new mobo! I understand). So you may want to hang on a bit.
Regards

[swiss]

5 year warranty, .

2nd time someone mentions this in this thread.
Honestly, who would use a board for 5 years?
That's roughly 3 CPU generations.
Given the fact it's a x58 I hope he does not have to use it for 5 years.
So, two or three - maybe.
Also, I've never had a board go "taco".

[Flyby]

Hi gang,
It seems prudent to wait a little longer. I've got the processor, but the rest can wait until we start seeing reports "from the field" about how CoD runs on various system configurations. Video ram and system ram will sort themselves out, as will what effect HDD cache ram has on performance.

I intend to run in 19x10 resolution on a 24(+) inch monitor. I wonder if video ram will be tested at higher game settings while using that resolution. Thoughts on that? (As an aside, seeing distant planes as dots will hopefully be easy at that rez) Of course my goal is to run CoD at the highest game settings I can while still having smooth frame rates in a sky filled with activity, or while in a low-alt pursuit with trees and houses whizzing by. Maybe that's a tall order, knowing Oleg. But we'll see.

Thank you all again for very thoughtful replies. I'll research the various components before I put my hard-earned out there. I think my system will appear in my signature one day. It will have been a long time for that! :D
Flyby out

[F19_lacrits]

2nd time someone mentions this in this thread.
Honestly, who would use a board for 5 years?
That's roughly 3 CPU generations.
Given the fact it's a x58 I hope he does not have to use it for 5 years.
So, two or three - maybe.
Also, I've never had a board go "taco".

It's a testimony to the products quality, the maker is confident and want's the customer to trust that this board should last.
Maybe that mobo and CPU will be good enough as a surf and/or office PC still in 5 years time.. After 2-3 years a gamer normally has a completely new build for his gaming rig.
I've got a PSU with a 7 year warranty by the way.. ;)
I'm running +2.5 years on my current rig.. I've saved up for something new when I know better how CLoDO will perform. :D