P35, P43, P45 - which suits best?

Granted; the price is up there a bit, but, not outrageously and this board is easily worth every penny - and you can do a "price comparison" online and get the best price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131219

 

Regarding MSI, i have an MSI Neo2-FR (P35) which sounded impressive in the specs when i got it a year ago, and a great value for money but this is going to be my last MSI board as its SO full of idiosyncrasies, quirks, abnormalities, i have been through all sorts of workarounds ever since to keep it working (OC my Q6600 to modest 3Ghz) relatively right.

i could try post a list of some of the flaws jumping up on the top of my head if interested, some of them were universal with these boards not just my sample.

Stay with Asus, Abit, and not further than Gigabyte.

 

Hello everyone. Sorry for disturbing you in this old thread which was created and active in the year 2008. The reason why I post in here because I would like to ask whether P45/P43 chipsets are still relevant for medium/light tasks in the year 2018. I have unused following items:
1) Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
2) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
3) ATX case
4) ECS NVidia GeForce GTX 570
5) Galax NVidia GeForce GT 1030
6) 405W power supply unit.

Since I have all the unused items listed above, I'm thinking to purchase P45/P43 chipsets based motherboard as an additional desktop(s) for doing medium/light tasks. I only shortlisted the P45/P43 chipsets based motherboard that supports DDR3 up to 16GB (this is the reason why I only consider P45/P43 chipsets).

If you think that P45/P43 chipsets are no longer relevant in the year 2018 and just a waste of money (even though I only need to purchase motherboard and ram to complete a desktop), I will not proceed this intention.

Thank you and have a nice day.

 

Necro,

Don't the core2's only support up to 8gb ram from memory? No pun intended.

The e8600 and especially the q9650 should be fine for general office tasks with either GPUs and PSU. And basic games, no triple A titles though I'd have thought.

 

if you can find a decent p45 board for less than $60 i would say its not the worst idea, main problem at this point is that the caps on alot of boards are gonna start to go bad since its been at least 7 years since they were manufactured. p43 is ok but the fsb wont go super high if you intend to oc, i would go for a p35 board over p43 , though they are older and are limited to pcie 1.1 , wouldnt pay more than $40 at this point.

16gb is possible but bear in mind im pretty sure they have to be low density modules (2rx8) , and they may not play nice with newer ddr3 dram. , you can do 16gb on ddr2 boards aswell, but it can be tough to find supported 4gb ddr2 sticks.

running 4 sticks of 4gb will also be rough on the memory controller, probably wont be able to reach higher memory speeds (>900-1000mhz) with good timings unless you get a really good board, which tend to not be cheap.

Lastly, the excessive power consumption , a q9650 oced to 4ghz+ will idle at 100w from the wall (even with speed step end c1e) , and pull >250w from the wall under cpu load only.
You'll need a pretty beefy cooler if you intent to run an oced quad. definitely wouldn't run the quad with the gtx 570 on a that psu.

 

Sorry for late reply.

All this time I thought it should be no problem for the core 2's to use memory up until 16GB, because I do find motherboards for the core 2's (both DDR2 and DDR3) that can support memory up until 16GB. At this moment I only play CS GO, so I think both e8600 and q9650 might not have any problem running the game.

I already bought a used Gigabyte GA-EP43T-S3L motherboard from ebay last week, as shown in the link below:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-EP43T-S3L-rev-14#ov

I decided to go for P43 instead of P45 because the price of the used P45 is around 2 to 3 times the price of the used P43 on ebay. In addition, I have no intention to do crossfire (P45 supports crossfire while P43 doesn't).

If I want to buy new DDR memory, do I need to make sure that it is low density?

It is still possible to find used 4 x 4GB DDR2 800MHz, but it is more expensive than new 4 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz (or 1666MHz). I decided to purchase P43 board that supports DDR3 because of this.

So far I have no intention to overclock the P43 system, so I don't think I need any beefy cooler at the moment.


Thank you very much.

 

the memory controller for Core2 and older is located on the chipset rather than the cpu, and Afaik the p45/p35 based chipset cannot address high density memory chips or High density modules, you can buy multiple 4gb memory stick types for ddr3 (and ddr2) 2Rx8 , 2Rx4 or 1Rx8 ect. 2R means 2 ranks or memory chips on both sides of the stick , x8 is the number of chips per side. If a 4gb stick uses less than 16chips total it is using high density memory chips.

for Lga 775 you want 2 ranks 8 chips perside for 4gb sticks, avoid 2rx4(4chips perside),1rx8(8chips 1 side) sticks and 4Rank modules (usually 16chips perside,sometimes referred to highdensity modules.) as they are not supported at all,

I should also warn you the gigabyte boards can be picky about the ddr3 memory , compatibility isn't great. may need custom settings to get it working right.

recommend looking up what other people have gotten to work or read the QVL list for your board to find the most compatible ram.

 

Good day.

I already received the board in good condition last week.

While trying to shop for a DDR3 memory in a shop nearby my house however, the shopkeeper told me that there are 2 types of DDR3 ram - the old type high density memory and the new type low density memory.

The shopkeeper told me that some older motherboards are not compatible with the new type low density memory. To make the situation worse, the brand new DDR3 available in the market nowadays are the new type low density memory.

I went to the shop without bring the motherboard. The shopkeeper told me to come again with the motherboard so that I can test it with the new type low density memory before deciding to purchase it.

The shopkeeper said some old motherboards can detect the new type low density memory after the BIOS are updated, but some old motherboards still don't detect the new type low density memory even after the BIOS are updated.

Co-incidentally, there are few desktops at my office with the old type high density DDR3. I borrowed the memory temporarily to install windows 10 on system with the P43 motherboard. So far the system is ok.

I even take this opportunity to update the BIOS to the latest version. One of the version even have remark saying 'improving memory compatibility', but I'm not sure whether the update has anything got to do with the new type low density DDR3.

I will go to the shop again with the motherboard this weekend. Hopefully the motherboard can accept the new type low density DDR3. Otherwise I might have to forget about this building P43-based system project.

 

I assume the shop keeper is refering to the newer sticks as low density because they have fewer memory chips, this can be confusing since the actual memory chips are double the "density" of the older chips

you can give it a try but i recommend sticking to 2rx8 (16chips) sticks when using 4gb dimms(the old "normal" density sticks), the Lga775 chipsets predate the newer 2rx4(8 chips 4 perside) and 1rx8 (8chips on 1 side) 4gb sticks , the DDR2 side of the memory controller cannot use sticks of these types, and im pretty sure that the DDR3 side shares this limitation. you can still buy the old type 2rx8 sticks , just have to look around.