Which Socket 2011 MB?

[EniGmA1987]

Some games I have been playing recently are in dire need of much stronger single thread performance so I am moving to socket 2011, I dont want to pay tons of money for a motherboard so I am trying to decide between the ASUS P9X79 and ASRock Extreme6. Normally I would be getting the Sabertooth but it is just way too much money to justify so I have to settle for cheaper. I have had both great boards and absolutely terrible boards with ASUS before but overall everyone seems to like them, but the ASRock also seems to have all the features I want and a nicer color scheme. So which one would you all go with and why?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157289
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131804



I will only be using a single graphics card, and will be going with the quad core processor. But I will be running 64GB of RAM. So slot layout doesnt matter to me, just overall stability and max overclock potential. I am wanting to get between 4.5-5GHz on the CPU if I can. Using Corsair H100 cooling. One plus to the ASRock is that I could plug in all my hard drives, right now (and with the ASUS if I go that way) I use an external enclosure to swap a few drives around when I need to access data. I have 7 HDDs and 2 SSDs/ But it isnt a huge deal to not be able to plug them all in. The enclosure works fine, just a minor inconvenience.

[OS-Wiz]

I'd say go with the ASUS P9X79. ASRock's reputation has been receiving some dings lately with their Z77 mobo's. A friend of mine has the P9X79 and has had very good reliability with it. (Cheaper is not always better. I know, that may shock some folks)

[XII]

As you go for a quad-core, and Asrock is lacking on bus-clocking, I`d say Asus. If it has to do with money, MSI has a good alternative, in the GD65-8D.
The anounced Asrock E11 looks nice though, as do the other E`s.

[rintamarotta]

Asus P9X79, from the two, but since i had the money i bought MSI Big Bang-XPower II

[Splave]

wait a sec you said you wanted good single threaded performance...why are you looking at x79 when only benefits is 6 Cores...Ivy seems the best bet here imo

[EniGmA1987]

Because I want the RAM capacity.

[rintamarotta]

32Gb DDR3 at 2400Mhz or 2133Mhz for IvyBridge motherboards is not enough for you?

I dont see what could use 32Gb of DDR3 memory exept higly loaded server's, its true that i have 96Gb just because of i can but i have never managed use more than 26Gb of it.

[EniGmA1987]

Well I need three 2GB RAMDisk's for use with hosting different Minecraft servers. Each server uses around 6-8GB of RAM, so we will average it at 7GB. That is 27GB of RAM usage for Minecraft servers I host for people and myself.
Then I want to use 8GB of RAM as cache space for my gaming drive. Cant use a SSD for Steam because my Steam drive is like 700GB in size. Then I want another 8GB put as a RAMDisk for Windows pagefile usage to help speed things up. Dont NEED to do this one, but I might as well since I am going to be using so much RAM anyway. SO that comes to 43GB~ of RAM usage already right there. Then I need to have some free space to actually run other programs and games that I play. I guess 20GB extra to run stuff is a bit much, but I either run 32 or 64 gigs, and 32 wont be enough. So since I have so much extra maybe I will raise the RAM cache on the gaming drive to 16GB of cache space just for s and gigs.

The core of Minecraft is single threaded only, so I need some good performance there. But Minecraft also takes a very large amount of memory to run big servers with lots of people, so I need the extra capacity that a socket 2011 provides. Skyrim also renders all its shadows on the CPU instead of GPU and I play that a lot and the tweaks and mods I run tend to get laggy on the current setup so I want to upgrade because I hate leaving the shadows so ugly. And some of the old games I still like to play only run on the CPU for everything in Windows 7, so the extra single thread performance will help there too. I know it may seem excessive, but I have quite a few people who rely on me for good server performance and I like to use my computers to their fullest potential. Plus I dont have room to set up 4 towers just to keep things separate. Easier to manage on 1 PC anyway.


And it is actually only going to be 1600 speed RAM, as performance has shown to be only 1-2FPS difference between 1600 and 2400MHz RAM speed. So the extra cost of high speed, high density cant be justified.

[BHD]

ASUS P9X79 DLX

or

MSI X79A-GD65

[mdzcpa]

Asus P9X79 for the win. I run this board in my son's rig and it rocks. Running ram disk, 64gb, and 3930k at 4.7 all day long with basic water cooling. It never skips a beat. Running Gskill on the Asus x79 is a key to success. We also enjoy the SSD cache feature. very solid board.

[OC Nub]

+1 for the Asus board.

Ive enjoyed playing with IvyBridge, but X-79 is the most stable platform I think Ive used, and it would be my first choice for a 24/7 rig.

[Crisao23]

I'll second the gskill comment. Running a P9X79 WS here with 64GB of G.skill memory. 100% stable. Intel sure needs some work on the RSTe drivers, but it's fine.