Nvidia vs Intel chipsets for gaming

[drnick79]

Hey Everyone ,

What chipset do most of you prefer for your gaming rigs? Let me first qualify that question by taking crossfire or SLI OUT of the equation. Let's just say you were confined to one video card and did not use RAID, and you were using DDR2.

The reason I ask pertains to memory benchmarks. My 680i mobo scores everest read values of over 10k with sub 50ns latencies with essentially no tweaking and running the ram linked and synced at well below it's stock speed (ie, 900 mhz for 1066 sticks). I also have p35 and x48 mobos. To achieve comparable scores on the intel chipset boards, I have to really fine tune bios settings and/or run very high memory speeds and voltages, some of which my DDR2 collection isn't even capable of. Perhaps any of this doesn't even have a noticeable effect on gaming performance, but hey, this IS the forum that deals with extracting every last morsel of goodness out of your setup, is it not?

Just wondering what everyone else's thoughts are on this (I can't believe he wasted his time posting that) topic

[Lev]

check out the p35-ds3l

doesnt have raid but its an amazing clocker

taking sli out of the question intel definitely have better boards then nvidia atm

[jas420221]

No SLI or Crossfire, X38 platform. People are complaining (though I dont understand why) about 780i mobos. I have had no problems, but I believe others have. X38 is a rock solid performer.

[Budwise]

With SLI aside. Intel chipsets all the way...

[drnick79]

So do you think being able to push the FSB/CPU speed higher on an Intel chipset would benefit gameplay more than the superior memory bandwidth that I can achieve with Nvidia chipsets (I mainly play MMORPG's)?

[jas420221]

So do you think being able to push the FSB/CPU speed higher on an Intel chipset would benefit gameplay more than the superior memory bandwidth that I can achieve with Nvidia chipsets (I mainly play MMORPG's)?

That really has nothing to do with it. The performance differences of the chipsets mentioned are negligable at best. You wont notice the 1 fps difference it MAY give you. Not to mention, no MMORPG out is very demanding on a PC (think WOW and its archaeic graphics that I can play just fine on an ATI 9800xt).

[drnick79]

That really has nothing to do with it. The performance differences of the chipsets mentioned are negligable at best. You wont notice the 1 fps difference it MAY give you. Not to mention, no MMORPG out is very demanding on a PC (think WOW and its archaeic graphics that I can play just fine on an ATI 9800xt).

That's what I wanted to know-whether or not there would really be any tangible difference between the two- thanks!

[Lev]

.. well there are differences depending on what kind of proc youre ocing

for example im not sure about nvidia boards being stable over 430fsb with a quad.. but good p35s can go higher

[jas420221]

.. well there are differences depending on what kind of proc youre ocing

for example im not sure about nvidia boards being stable over 430fsb with a quad.. but good p35s can go higher

Im easily over that for testing...and so are many many others. 500FSB though, different story...

[drnick79]

Running a dualie right now (e8400). Anticipating the release of Age of Conan so I might have to pick up a quad core in the future if Conan truly does support muliple cores (thought I read that on their website) and I like the game.

[CrazyNutz]

Intel p35, incredible overclocker, excellent performance, all with a nice price point. I've had the FSB well over 500mhz with just a modest NB voltage boost.

[Emerica]

check out the p35-ds3l

doesnt have raid but its an amazing clocker

taking sli out of the question intel definitely have better boards then nvidia atm

Agreed. If you are not using dual video cards then P35 is the way to go.

[XtremeTiramisu]

If the amount of money spent is not your concern then get Nvidia chipset with SLI capability. Nvidia cards are generally faster than ATI cards in terms of AA/AS performance. I would play games with both AA/AS enabled and max out if my video card(s) allows me to with certain games. AA/AS are something meant for newer games to be played the way it's meant to be played.

If money is your primary concern, get Intel based mobo like X38 or X48 chipset becouse chances are you're not going to be afford a second video running SLI, but then you're opened to Crossfire setup. Until ATI addresses its performance issue with AA/AS, i wouldn't consider buying an ATI card. So even with a Intel based mobo, get the best performance card for the money, Nvidia's 8800GTS 512MB now or wait for the newer 99xx series to come out with the new GT200 core architecture.