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trying to choose mobo


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looking for a 771 mobo to build a dual proc xeon setup. i have a ?

do i have to use fbdimm ram? or is that only if i want to use ecc ?

cause 240 pin fbdimm vs. 240 pin ddr2 sdram is a big price difference

 

this seems to be the best i can find so far.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813182101

 

this looks good cause it has 2 pciE 16x slots, but it says they run at 8x

 

so what exactly does this mean? if you have 1 card installed it runs at 116x and if you have 2 they share the 16 and run at 8 each?

 

or if you know of a good mobo with 16gb+ memory and at least 1 16x pciE slot but preferr 2. also firewire would be nice. dont need onboard video.

 

this looks good and has a large max memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813151072

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If you're looking at stuff this high end, why not get a real Mac Pro? The motherboards you're looking at with two Xeons would cost $1800-$2000 alone, without a case, HD, optical drive, video card, memory, or operating system (assuming two 2.66GHz Woodcrest's like the low-end Mac Pro).

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because i think this system would spank a real macpro

In what way (not trying to argue. I'm just wondering)? Compared to the first board, the Mac Pro supports more Memory (32GB vs 24GB), has more PCIe slots (4 vs 2, and the second in the Mac Pro is 8-lane vs 4-lane in the SuperMicro board). If you're talking about processors, the dual 2.0, 2.66, and 3.0GHz Xeons are the the higher end Woodcrests, not Dempsey or Conroe based, and the quad core is a 3.0GHz Clovertown, which you can't even buy yet for a PC (until July anyway). The MacPro has two FW800 and two FW400 ports vs 0 and 0 on the SuperMicro, S/PDIF in and out vs stereo in and out.

 

The SuperMicro has two PCI vs 0 on the Mac Pro (one of which would be blocked by the 16x PCIe video card though), and two PCI-X vs 0 on the Mac Pro (which I'm not even sure would work in Intel Macs anyway). It also has two 9-pin serial ports. woohoo. lol.

 

I'm not seeing the spanking here

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well i think you are wrong about ram im pretty sure macpro support 16gb max. also the fact that they have more pciE slots is really the only upside, but thats because all 771 mobo seem to be suited for server and not so much workstation. but i was reading that nvidia licensed something so they will be coming out with workstation mobos for 771 and wont need fbdimm memory and will probably have all the stuff the macpro has over a serverboard and more.

also i read the clovertown chip that apple is using is 150w and the one intel will come out with later next month wont be lower.

 

so it think what it comes down to is there just arnt very many, or any good motherboards yet, but i think ill wait till next month when the X5365 is released and the pricecuts happen and hope there is a better mobo option then

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Apple says 16GB, but it will work with 32GB. For as long as I can remember, Apple has always kept the specs at whatever the max was when they wrote the spec sheet, even if larger DIMMs would work. lol. (my 6100 said max 72MB, I had 136. my 8600 said max 512. I had a gig. My G4 said max 1GB. I had 2GB, etc)

 

Mac Pro running 32GB

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