X38 or P35 Board. Which should I buy?

I am about to purchase a board, but ran into some confusion.

I will only be using one video card (eVGA 8800GT). I don't plan on over clocking the video card. I will be buying the Conroe E6850 3.0ghz and maybe "might" over clock it to 3.2ghz at the very most. I will be purchasing the Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and won't over clock that.



Given that info and money aside, would I benefit with a P35 or a X38 board? Why?

The only benefit that you might see is that the 8800GT is PCIe 2.0 and so is the x38 chipset. The P35 chipset is only PCIe 1.1. As far as I've seen there has been no comparison of the two. However, the 8800GT is still the best performing nvidia card for it's price.

I know its probably not what you want to hear but I will add my tuppence worth.



If it was me I would put it on hold just until Jan 08 as its alleged that the new Intel X48 chipsets will be rolled out, this is what I am going to do as you kind of *future proof your self* (gets ready to be flamed for that statement )



Just my view on the situation, as its only around the corner.

I appreciate your honesty, however I just purchased a eVGA 8800GT 512mb card and I a burning to use it, and my current motherboard does not have pci-e slots.

as theresthatguy said, go with the x38.

usually i would recommend a P35 board, but you want pci2 2.0 to get the most out fo your card.

whats the price difference by the way?

In all my readings the X38 vs P35 is not worth the price / performance ratio. You don't even utilizes the all of the PCIe 1.1 at the moment and probably will not for a while. So save yourself some money to spend on other parts. And yes the X48 is coming out but will only use DDR3 memory and that is very costly for not much of a performance gain over DDR2. As time goes by the timings will get better as will performance and price.

difference is $20 dollars

ok well i reckon you should get it.

its a decent board no matter how you look at it.

I never told him to get x38. I merely gave reasons why one might be better than the other to let him choose for himself. If it was me and I had that 8800GT bad boy laying around, I would get the P35 now and upgrade to x48 later (if it was necessary for his needs.)

lol ok then...