Best mobo chipset for intel Quad?

[SuperAkuma]

I am going to ask here to see what my fellow honda geeks will say. I am ususally keep myself updated in the computer world but I am a little outdated. My current system is a Intel e4400 and I have the Gigabyte DS3 mobo with the P956 chipset. At that the time that I bought that setup, I didn't think/care about quad because it was too expensive for my cheap ass.

I've built about 3 intel quads computer for my friends within the past 3 months. All of them used the Intel Q6600 and the Gigabyte DS3 P35 chipset because at the time of built, that was the best. When I built those rig, the x38 chipset was fairly new and I haven't really seen anyone use them.

Now that I have the Q6700 in my hand, I don't know if it is worth spending another $130 or so to get a new mobo with an updated chipset.

I haven't really been playing games much so I don't really care about sli/crossfire capability. Besides suffing the web for porn, I use this computer for photoshop and I work a lot with photography. Most of the photos that I deal with are very large files from scanned photos and scanned negative. Most of them are 30-40MB files. When you start messing with layers, filter and stuff like that, you know what I mean. ( I know PS also rely heavy on RAM and harddrive speed, I will cover that later).

So I want the best chipset for the quad core or is there a BIG difference if I upgrade from the P956 chipset to the newier x38 or n680i.

I know I can search the interweb but I want to get the opinions of the geeks on this board first.

BTW, I did NOT get the q6700 for anywhere near the retail price. It pays to work at a retail store that sells intel product. I am sure some of you guys know what I mean by this. Intel has a killer deal every xmas on there cpu/mobo and a copy of Windows.

[SuperAkuma]

Just got the Q6700 installed and testing out the cpu with winrar. On my old e4400 I took me 16 minutes or so to zip about 1GB worth of jpeg pictures taken with my dSLR camera. With the q6700, it took only 4 minute to do the same thing!

Ok still looking for the best chipset.

[gurusan]

Is the Q6700 a g0 stepping? If not, I'd sell it and pick up a g0 q6600.

Anyway, the 965 chipset is just fine unless you plan on heavy overclocking, and even then there are a couple boards that handle quads fine. (I have a p5b deluxe and got my quad up to 3.8ghz)...

However, in general the better quad motherboards are still the Gigabyte P35-DS3 series, Asus P5K series...the x38 chipsets don't really offer anything over the P35 other than dual x16 pci-e slots which you wouldn't care about as you dont want dual cards...

[SuperAkuma]

Originally Posted by gurusan

Is the Q6700 a g0 stepping? If not, I'd sell it and pick up a g0 q6600.

Anyway, the 965 chipset is just fine unless you plan on heavy overclocking, and even then there are a couple boards that handle quads fine. (I have a p5b deluxe and got my quad up to 3.8ghz)...

However, in general the better quad motherboards are still the Gigabyte P35-DS3 series, Asus P5K series...the x38 chipsets don't really offer anything over the P35 other than dual x16 pci-e slots which you wouldn't care about as you dont want dual cards...

I am kinda confused with the stepping. I looked on the cpu itself before I installed it and it didn't say G0 on it. I used cpuz to find it, it says the stepping was B but the revision is G0.

[gurusan]

Yeah that's a G0. Might as well try to clock it on the DS3.

[SuperAkuma]

Originally Posted by gurusan

Yeah that's a G0. Might as well try to clock it on the DS3.

I'll give it a shot when I have some time, hopefully tomorrow. On my e4400, I was able to OC it from 2GHz to 2.8GHz without a problem for months. But I wasn't able to get to the 3GHz mark like others who have the same chip.

I'll post some score later this week when I OC it.