Suggestions for decent LGA775 uATX motherboards

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oddfellow

Regular
I'm gonna upgrade soon to Intel quad core. I love the micro ATX form factor and have used small gaming cases for a long time. My current uATX Core2-duo system doesn't support quad core and is absolutely hopeless at overclocking.

So I'm after a decent, quad core compatible uATX mobo with good overclocking potential and a pcie x16 slot.
I've trawled the net, but uATX boards seem to get ignored by review sites, so I have no idea which ones are decent overclockers.

Does anyone have any recommendations??
 
Not any recommendations but I'd suggestion searching some review sites forums. uATX is a awesome form factor IMO but since most of the boards are budget sites don't cover it, but they're really popular in forums of those sites.
 
I've built a machine with a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R. Set up a little "portable" gaming rig in a cube box for a friend. Its BIOS is pretty full-featured and let me overclock easily to 400x8 (3.2 GHz) (E6750). He's running a 8800GTS 640, 4 gigs DDR2-800, and a X-Fi XtremeGamer. I did initially have some trouble with the single PATA port (very slow), but that went away after I updated the BIOS. The board is as capable as my 2 ATX Gigabyte P965 and P35 boards. I wouldn't really hesitate at all to get one for myself.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/gigabyte/GA-G33M-DS2R/g1.htm
 
NICE! That board looks ideal. :D

Interestingly, it also has a PCIEx4 slot in addition to the X16 one.
I know some server boards only have x8 PCIE slots, but people have put full length PCIE graphics cards into them by carefully cutting a grove out of the back of the connector slot, allowing the card to physically fit. They run fine, just in an x8 configuration.

I know a lot of crossfire compatible Intel chipsets run in x16/x4 mode, which beggs the question; Could I run Crossfire on this board and have a dual card microATX system!??!? :devilish:

Thank's for the suggestion, it looks like it's gonna be the one for me. :cool:
 
Studying pics of the board, it actually looks like the back of the slot is already open, meaning a full length x16 card would fit straight in, without modification.

I've got two HD2600XT's lying around, it's gotta be worth some experimantation :cool:

EDIT: Crossfire confirmed! the x4 slot IS open ended and the G33 based board works fine in x16/x4 crossfire :cool:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah it's an awful lot like a full-size ATX board, but with 33% of it missing. :)
 
That Asus board look pretty damn decent also, but I have to say I'm gonna have to go with the Gigabyte.

Done a bit more digging and I'm pretty certain in crossfire it would run a x4/x4 configuration, since both cards need to have sync'd interfaces. I'm quite sure that wouldn't be a problem, since the bandwidth provided should be adequate enought to feed both cards.

I found a very brief user review of crossfire on this board. The guy was using two HD2600XT's (as I would be). In that good old game called 3dMark2006, dual card (pcie x4/x4) performance was roughly 30% higher than with a single card (pcie x16).
I can't find the damn web page now, but I recall other users commenting on how well the board overclocks, so It's gotta be the one. :cool:
 
Why HD 2600XT's? I mean seriously, its a rather horrible card on its own and for that price you could get a single card that is just as fast in ALL games and not just the ones Crossfire will work in. Sounds very silly to do this.
 
Agreed, but as I said earlier, I do have two of these cards lying around, so they'd be good to use as a test.
If crossfire works succesfully, then two 3850's would definately me the next additions :D
 
oddfellow said:
That Asus board look pretty damn decent also, but I have to say I'm gonna have to go with the Gigabyte.

Done a bit more digging and I'm pretty certain in crossfire it would run a x4/x4 configuration, since both cards need to have sync'd interfaces. I'm quite sure that wouldn't be a problem, since the bandwidth provided should be adequate enought to feed both cards.

I found a very brief user review of crossfire on this board. The guy was using two HD2600XT's (as I would be). In that good old game called 3dMark2006, dual card (pcie x4/x4) performance was roughly 30% higher than with a single card (pcie x16).
I can't find the damn web page now, but I recall other users commenting on how well the board overclocks, so It's gotta be the one. :cool:
Click to expand...

No, it would run 16x 4x, there's no requirement for sync'd interfaces. There'll be a performance delta between it and an 8x 8x one or a 16x 16x one, but nothing significant.
 
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