a mobo ? for the techies here

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

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.

[Tacoma74]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

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-s...efficient.html

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by 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/...ds/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]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

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