Originally posted by cincyrob:

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looking at new ram. 2x2gb sticks. these arent the beloved dominator series, not even a corsair set in the list. good ram is getting pretty cheap even for 4gb. is there a real advantage to haveing a heat spreader as to not have one? other than for protection of the chips on the sticks????i know sounds stupid but thats how it truely looks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcom...lt=True

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Quote:

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I tend to find heatspreaders on RAM only necessary when using four sticks together. Two sticks it doesn't seem to be necessary.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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DFI boards tend to have rather confusing BIOSes

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Originally posted by cincyrob:

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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In my experience Gigabyte is the most reputable board manufacturer. I've been using them almost exclusively since I was wowed by the GA-965P-DS3. I have never been dissatisfied one bit with their quality or design. And the one board that did go south they replaced for free with an updated version!!

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well im not trying to start a war between mobo manufactures,but i have had 3 different gigabyte boards and i have had nothing but trouble with all 3. gigabyte has replaced them with one that works and after i get the replacement they are fine. just something about haveing 3 different boards and all 3 of them have had northbridge problems. thats just my bad luck i guess. i know there are good reliable gigabyte boards.. myself have yet to have one. thats why in the near future i will be trying out a different manufacture. BioStar,ASUS are the top 2 that im looking at. with DFI a close 3rd.
if i stay with my E8400 i think i will go with the Biostar board, but if i do plan on getting the Q9550 i will get a ASUS or DFI board.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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The high-end Gigabyte boards have proven a little soso to be honest, but Gigabyte are certainly the #1 manufacturer for low-midrange boards that work. DFI boards tend to have rather confusing BIOSes, and obviously, if you buy a microATX board you should expect less functionality, at least straight out of the box.
Cheap Asus and ASRock boards are pretty much guaranteed to fail in a short lifetime. The higher end ones aren't as bad, but agreed, their design leaves a lot to be desired.
The Asus BIOS does more than the Gigabyte, but ultimately is let down by the quality of the board itself. It offers several advanced config options that Gigabyte BIOSes don't offer outside P45, yet the maximum FSB of the chipset is so low (460) that none of them ever need to be used.
DFI boards are still very picky about certain hardware which makes them a big risk to use in a lot of systems. Biostar is the most attractive proposition at the moment, but of course they don't make X48 boards and their history of mediocre quality products is hard to ignore.

I tend to find heatspreaders on RAM only necessary when using four sticks together. Two sticks it doesn't seem to be necessary.

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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Right. Integrated graphics may hinder you slightly but you'd be far more likely to be hitting the limit of the chip. Have you tried going any higher with your 940? What voltage are you using? Have you tried OCing using the multiplier only, leaving the FSB alone? 3.5GHz is a low OC. I've seen them go higher on 780G boards.

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