Hi all,

Just a newbie question.

Does this indicate that sound cards will be moving to PCI Express.

Just curious because I have an older Board and am going to want to upgrade and I find it hard to fit a sound card around my twin 8800 boards. Due to them taking up the available slots.

Any info ?

how many ppl are using even crossfire 2x let alone think about crossfire 4x? 4 pcie slots IMHO is overkill. hope amd at least delivers crossfire x drivers in time. else it'll all be an utter waste.

At the beginning of the article you mention that this is a DDR3 board, yet in the specifications chart you have lines for:

[quote] DDR2 Memory Dividers [/quote]

&

[quote] Regular Unbuffered, non-ECC DDR2 Memory to 8GB total [/quote]

"many x16 devices are only capable of down-training to speeds of x4 or x8 and without this bridge chip the last x1 lane would be otherwise useless." This does interest me, I have had 3 nvidia cards (2x6600GT and 6200) running on a plain jane MSI neo4 OEM (Fujitsu Seimens bios), simply by cutting the ($25) 6200 down to a x1 connector and cutting the back out of one of the motherboard x1 slots to allow the 6600GT to fit physically.

I thought that part of the PCIe standard was auto-negotiation, wouldn't any device NOT compatible with x1 be breaking the standard?

http://picasaweb.google.com/nubie07/PCIEX1/photo#5054159711464753314

I am very curious about this, as the PCIe technology doesn't seem to be getting as much use as it could(IE it is MUCH more flexible than it is given credit for). The PCIe scaling analysis at Tomshardware showed that an 8800GTS was still quite capable at x8, so on PCIe 2.0 a x4 slot could be used for gaming at acceptable resolutions! (I am fully aware that only the first 2 slots are PCIe 2.0)

The new Radeon "X2" card with 4 outputs could fit in this motherboard 3 times over, that is 12 displays on 1 PC with off-the-shelf technology!! With the quad-core and 12 displays, 2 PCs at around ~$1,000-$3,000 apiece could service a whole classroom of kids using learning software, typing tutor programs, or browsing the web. Even with regular old 2 output video cards you could get 8 displays on a much cheaper rig with sub-$50 video cards. So I wouldn't say "the performance potential of such a setup is marginal", unless I was measuring performance in such meaningless terms as how many $xxx video cards I can jam in a PC to get xx% increase.

What's with the memory reference voltage?
On the specification page (pg 2)
Memory Reference Voltage Auto, 0.90V ~ 1.25V

It should be half the DDR3 memory voltage
1.5V x 0.5 = 0.75V, so should be: Auto, 0.75V ~ 1.25V

I can't find it now, but a couple of days ago I found this X48 board listed on MSI's website along with an X48C which would take either DDR3 or DDR2. Would be great to be able to use it now with DDR2 and upgrade to DDR3 when the prices get sane and it becomes clear why DDR3 is better.

Dave

almost always recommend replacing the thermal interface material (TIM)

You state to replace teh TIM for the PWM and Chipset heatpipe coolers. I have a question regarding that. I have a IP35 pro, and I bought a new case. I thought now might be a good time to replace my pushpins with bolts, but I am hesitant about removing the thermal pad. I know that a direct contact to the heatpipe cooling system will result in better heat transfer, but I am afraid of shorting something out. Is it safe to have the cooler setting directly on the PWM? Does the pad also function as an insulator? I can live with a bit higher temps, but I can't live with killing my MOBO. Anyone's comments with some experience on this would be greatly appreciated.

I get 9631mb/s on my Nvidia EVGA 680i chipset at only 750mhz ddr2 with 4-4-3-5 1T.

And my brother who owns an Intel P35 Foxconn Mars board gets 9132mb/sec at 950mhz ddr2 with 5-5-5-18 2t.

So what is the point on moving to ddr3 when it offers no performance gains in memory bandwidth even at a whopping 1600mhz. Is it just me who thinks Cas7 is wayyyy too high to even consider to push ddr3 to the market right now?

I believe this is what only Intel wants so it can make AMD look old just like how they forced AMD a few years ago to make AM2 boards that only supported dd2.