Which Motherboard: Asus P6X58D or EVGA X58 FTW3?

The last decision I have to make before I buy (hopefully today or tomorrow  from Sara at DS) is which motherboard should I choose for build 428296? So I’ve researched too long, including some great advice in this thread). Now what do you all think. So let get a constructive discussion going. I want a board that overclocks well, but isn’t “overly” complicated (why I dropped Rampage III) as this is my first overclocked system. I’ll upgrade to a fast Gulftown when they cost less. I’m not a gamer and will be doing processor/memory intensive video/photo editing, lots of transcoding, and serving music and video to my 5 member household. That means 24/7 operation with some long periods of heavy or full, multi threaded processor loads. I need the following on the board: SATA3 and SATA6 (regardless of the less than ideal implementations available at this time, again see this thread). I’ll be running 1 SSD for the OS & programs, 4 platter based hard drives in a pair of RAID 1 set ups: one 1TB pair for data (from DS) and one 1.5 or 2 TB pair for video/media (I’ll add these). I’ll also have 4 optical drives so I’d like plenty of SATA3 ports (also to use for future expansion). ATA OK since I have 2 fast optical drives with that interface, but not a must because can easily add card or do without. So let's get a discussion going. And if you can back up your opinion with links to reviews, etc. that's more credibility in my book. Thanks.

he is a quote from your previous thread... it has all the info to back up what i said (Thanks to Dragoonseal on this)

Originally posted by EyeFixer

I wanted a USB III board because I already have a USB III portable HD I.
You can get a PCIe USB 3.0 add on card for extremely cheap.

I also wanted 6Gb/s SATA to stave off obselecence because I have so little time for upgrading motherboards and overclocking these days. I realize despite what the vendors say these technologies probably don't actually have their own discrete chips/signal paths and run off the PCIe bus, but my thinking is that I would rather have the interface built in than not and I am unlikely to saturate the bus without heavy GPU use. Is this thinking all wrong?

That SATA III 6Gb/s is funny, it's basically downright false advertising. Oy vey, where to start. Well for one there are a ton of different implementation methods used:

Some just use a single PCIe 1.1 lane, this gives just 250MB/s bandwidth, worse than even a normal SATA II port which has 300MB/S bandwidth.

Some use a PLX chip to turn four PCIe 1.1 lanes into two 500MB/s PCIe 2.0 lanes, giving 500MB/s to the USB 3.0 chip and 500MB/s to the SATA III chip. Worse yet is that because of overhead data transfer you're only going to be able to use around 400MB/s of that (to be fair overhead also brings normal SATA II lanes down to 250-270MB/s). Worse yet is that the 500MB/s is shared between the two SATA III ports, so if you use both ports you're back down to 250MB/s per port and a RAID array will top out at 400MB/s (like I linked in this thread).

The last and most aggressive method runs the primary PCIe x16 lane in split x8/x8 mode and steals 8 of those PCIe 2.0 lanes leaving only a PCIe x8 lane for the GPU. Each PCIe 2.0 lane is 500MB/s bandwidth. And funny story! The Marvell SATA III chip can only be connected to one PCIe lane at a time, so the USB 3.0 chip gets one lane, the Marvell SATA III chip gets one lane, and then the other 6 go unused. This starting to look familiar? This is just like the last example, the two SATA III ports get to share a 500MB/s lane and max out at 400MB/s after overhead.

Unless you use two PCIe add on cards, in which case the USB 3.0 and SATA III chips give control of all PCIe 2.0 lanes back and just default to single PCIe 1.1 lanes with only 250MB/s bandwidth.

Oh, and icing on the cake time. That Marvell SATA III controller, it sucks something fierce. No TRIM functionality (!), bad overhead, no cache utilization, little or no RAID functionality (only one of the chip models has RAID capability), compatibility issues, and almost no NCQ capability, just to name a few.

The standard Intel SATA II (ICH10R) ports may cap individually at 270MB/s and limit the sequential speeds of upcoming SSDs some but they beat the snot out of the Marvell offering in every other way. Also the maximum bandwidth for the ICH10R as a whole is much higher, Lilim pushes over 800MB/s which is twice what the Marvell chip can manage. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

And the Crucial RealSSD C300, the only SSD currently out with sequential read speeds higher than 270MB/s? Its performance plummets to unacceptable levels without TRIM support, so have fun running that on the TRIMless Marvell SATA III.

Morel of the story: don't waste money on SATA III 6G/b motherboards, they're all a scam.

I also like the dual BIOS in the Rampage III so I could have an overclocked and non overclocked profile which I thought the EVGA Limited couldn't do (although a great board and price). Am I wrong on this too?

No that's something different. A motherboard with a dual BIOS has an actual secondary backup BIOS chip that you can boot from in case you corrupt the primary with a bad BIOS flash or it just has an outright hardware failure.

Most any decent motherboard will have multiple profiles that you can save and load any settings to. This includes all EVGA boards, which I believe have 8 profile save slots. DS will ship you an overclocked rig with the overclock settings saved to one of the profile slots so you can easily switch between it and default stock settings. And you can even freely make some custom mild or intermediate overclock profiles. Though really DS overclocks are already pretty mild to start with, they do warranty the parts with overclock after all.




Edited by Raif - 03 Aug 2010 at 3:22pm

What is it about the EVGA LE that everyone likes so much?

OK, let's get this motherboard discussion going. If price weren't a consideration (but you can still like a board for the price:performance ratio) then what board would you choose and why? Come on, guys. Doesn't anyone have a opinion? Ranpage III anyone? I really like this board, even if the SATA3/USB3 is useless. Anyone else on my side? Anyone like MSI? I don't think they'll last the coming vendor consolidation, but that is just me. Got a favorite vendor if not board? Why?

Well, bad news, I can't find any x58 motherboard that has more than 8 SATA ports and 1 eSATA port. None of them seem to have more than 2 additional SATA ports, of which they will either be JMicron or Marvell ports.

So it looks like at best you will only be able to use three DVD burners and not all four. Unless you get a DVD duplicator, which are unfortunately very expensive.

At a glance it looks like the cheapest motherboard that DS carries to have 8 SATA + 1 eSATA ports may be the "EVGA x58 3X SLI."

Dragoonseal, you're right. As you've pointed out (here) over 6 SATA ports requires that  boards use some kind of bridge or connector chip (why SATA3 currently sucks). So I can get a great board with plenty of PCIe slots for SATA add in cards (like the EVGA LE) or a great board with bridge chips (like the Asus P6X58D, Rampage III or EVGA X58 SLI Classified) and I just have to be sure I plug the DVD drives into the controller run SATA ports. Hey, the EVGA X58 Classified is a good board and has 10 SATA ports right? Maybe it is time to flip a coin.

Dragoonseal, we're on the same page. The EVGA x58 3X SLI was my first choice until I realized that I could not fit the  Noctua NH-D14, right? From what I read it is the board's voltage regulator's heatsink that cause's clearance issues with the Noctura. I like the X58 3X SLi because, like you said, it has 9 SATA, an eSATA and I can even plug 2 of my high speed DVD-RWs into the EIDE to help me get to 4 optical drives with SATA prots to spare, plus plenty of other goodies. But the cooler I must have doesn't fit so what can I do? I don't think DS can mod the board so the NH-D14 fits, but I guess I could ask. I don't see another board with the same price:options ratio and price:performance ratio I want. From what you know of my needs, what board would you suggest now? Any suggestions? Anyone? 

i personally wouldnt worry about the 14 i dont think its worth the price or the wieght, unless you were looking to set some kind of records with air cooling, its not a cost efficient purchase. with some effort, (not $) you could likely get the same or better temps with the u12p anyway. just my 2 cents