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Core2 Quad Q6600 Motherboard recommendation


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My head hurts from all the reading and searching. If anyone is running a Core2 Quad Q6600 successfully with OSX what motherboard are you running? I would prefer if the IDE controller worked, at least 2 channel sound, Network isn't as big an issue (my current wireless works with OSX) . I currently have Uphuck 10.4.9 v1.3 . I am going from an older system that currently runs OSX great so will be re-using some components (video, Wireless, HDD's if I can get IDE working).

 

Thanks ;) Tripz

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WHY in the world do you recommend a P65 board to this guy??

 

DON't BUY A BAD AXE!!!

If you have a Q6600 you should buy a Gigabyte ga-p35-dq6 boards.

It's made for the q6600

and keeps the processor cool, along with future compability with the p35 curcuit.

 

Works great with osx86

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I have a Gigabyte P35-DQ6 with a Q6600 @ 3,2Ghz and it works like a charm in OSX and in general, but you could also buy a DS4 or a DS3 which are less expensive and also work great.

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I'm gonna recommend the BADAXE2 route to go down too.

 

Bought mine last month and have 10.4.9 running flawlessly following gdog's install guide on the Forum.

 

I have a Q6600 (overclocked to 3.0Ghz) with stock cooler and 2GB Ram with a 7600GT Card and the whole lot with HDD etc cost me around £500.

 

I have a friend with a Mac Pro 3.0Ghz and as I use mine mainly for amateur video work thought I'd try my luck benchmarking against his Mac Pro with iMovie. Mine applied an Aged Effect and Black and White to a video clip quicker than his (not by a lot though, a few seconds) but mine cost £500 and his £2500!!

 

I don't disagree with others choosing the Gigabyte boards which are quite possibly better but my aim was to get a rock solid osX86 system with 100% compatability that would compete with the Quad-core Mac-Pro's. I've done that and haven't looked back.

 

Incidently after building mine I did the same for a friend. He bought and assembled the components and I went round and installed osX 10.4.9 all fully working with 100% compatability (except SPDIF out and MIC in) for him so he was up and running within 25minutes. That's more important in my mind than a few percent improvement in performance.

 

Good luck with what you decide upon

 

System.tiff

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I don't know why everybody keeps buying Bad Axe 2.... It's phenomenally expensive, and 975 is an old chipset that doesn't clock so well, especially with the quads. You get better sound codecs and auxiliary hardware on other boards. I know to many people having a board built by Intel means it's got to be dead reliable, but realistically, things like the DS/DQ Gigabyte boards should last longer than Intel boards which are still using electrolytic caps and numerous other cheap-ish electronic components like coils, not to mention having extras like a back-up BIOS in case you suffer from a bad flash that Intel's parts don't have. Really, you should be looking at P35 boards now, since then you can upgrade to Penryn when it comes out, you'll get better performance due to a better memory controller and probably no worse hardware support if you get the right board.

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It's not that there aren't other good boards out there. It just depends where your priorities are. I've got 3 Bad Axe 2 systems for one reason...they work and are rock solid under very high stress situations. I'm a video editor by trade and overclocking is not important to me. System stability is. Because I use my systems for my business, I purchase the processors that will fit what I do. I've been running all these systems non stop editing and encoding with both FCS2 and CS3.

 

The systems are very easy to set up with both JaS and uphuck installers and all 8 drives are available for both windows and OSX86 so they are very flexible. Again, I read all these forums everyday and I know others have had successes with different boards. But I know from first hand experience that the BA2's work for me, so there's no need to take a chance on anything else. And if someone asks me what I'd suggest, I'm going to tell him/her what I know from my own experience just as I'd hope others would.

 

I've tried boards from a variety of manufacturers and it's important to me that they work the way I want under both systems. Intel, Asus, and Gigabyte all have some nice boards and also some real stinkers. If someone asks what works, we'd be doing him/her a disservice if we didn't give as many good choices as possible. Gamers can choose what will work best for them and video/audio techs can choose what will work best for them.

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To be honest, if you depend upon machines for day-to-day usage in high-stress business environments, you really should buy Mac Pros, or at least something that supports registered RAM. Not only are there substantial moral issues with illegally running OS X on beige boxes with the intent of making a profit out of them. I'd also say OSX86 is nothing but a toy and not trustworthy to use as an OS for boxes in a business environment purely because we don't know if it will continue to work tomorrow.

 

If you do use machines in that way, I still can't see why you'd chose a Bad Axe 2, which costs almost twice what, for example, a Gigabyte P35-DS3 or the Abit equivalent costs today. You're basically talking about a more than year old motherboard design, and that's an eternity in the computer industry. I'd take the improved performance and Penryn compatibility any day. Do you really believe a board is more stable just because it's made by Intel? They have BIOS bugs too!

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Here Here BJMoose

 

Whilst healthy debate is fun , what the original poster asked for was recommendation of a good board for his Q6600. Badaxe2 is a great recommendation full stop. Sure certain Asus and Gigabyte boards come highly recommended too but it really is horses for courses, I use a Badaxe and am very happy with it and I'm sure that if I'd gone down the Asus path then I'd be happy with that too.

 

There is no right and wrong choice board for you of all that have been mentioned in replies to your original Post here, it is just for you to consider the Pro's and the Cons of each model and this Forum will definately give you tons of ammunition to arm you with for your final choice.

 

Azureal, I do agree that osX86 project is for fun but if you don't have any moral issues with using it in a business environment then I'm certainly not going to judge anybody. As for reliability issues my Hack has NEVER let me down but what's the worst that could happen, your operating system goes down but as long as you back up your projects before rendering/encoding or whatever you use your machine for then I can't see any real issues. Regular backups are a fundamental part of modern computing and I very rarely keep critical data on the same drive as the Operating System.

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My head hurts from all the reading and searching. If anyone is running a Core2 Quad Q6600 successfully with OSX what motherboard are you running? I would prefer if the IDE controller worked, at least 2 channel sound, Network isn't as big an issue (my current wireless works with OSX) . I currently have Uphuck 10.4.9 v1.3 . I am going from an older system that currently runs OSX great so will be re-using some components (video, Wireless, HDD's if I can get IDE working).

 

Thanks :) Tripz

 

 

I have this CPU on a Intel D975XBX2 -- everything works, 2 channel audio Uphuck 10.4.9 v1.3

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Hi BJMoose!

In a forum thread, you wrote that with the Bad Axe II you can use all 8 S-ATA ports available. Here with my BX2 only the Intel-Ports are recognized. Did you anything special that the other 4 Ports work? Any Bios Tweaks? Special Kexts? I Use JaS 10.4.8 with Update to JaS 10.4.9.

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O.k., o.k.... My fault. I read some more forum threads, formated my drive on one of the intel-s-ata-ports, set my s-ata to "AHCI" in BIOS, connected the drive to a blue marvell connector - and it works. NICE !!!!

Hi Rhalls, Got your PMs this morning. I think we're in different time zones or at the least, you stay up much later than I do. Glad you got it working. Sounds like you've got your bios setup just like mine. I always like to use AHCI with windows so I didn't have to make any changes for OSX86. My problem was that for a couple of months I had 4 internal drives set on the ICH7 controller and 4 external drives set on the Marvell controller, accessed through an eSATA enclosure. Never got that one to work in OSX86, although Windows saw them all just fine. Assumed it was the Marvell controller fault and just lived with it for awhile. One day, I decided to open my case and install a drive internally on the Marvell buss and lo and behold, it worked. OSX86 just didn't like my external enclosure (apparantly it didn't offer a clean pass-through). Found one that did and all is well now.

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Initially i tried the marvell controller, but it didnt seem to work. after reading the posts, i tried what some people did: connect a faormated drive to the marvel ports. and now: it works. great. maybe its becauise of the AHCI setting? dont know, dont want to try: never change a running system. now ive got space for 8 x 500 GB. NICE for rendering and final cut :-)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi guys :D I'm working with pro audio under mac more that 15 years. I remember the great Power mac clones :( They were really great, rock solid for half of the price compared to the apple 9600 machines. So, I don't see any reason that nowdays clones can't be great. BTW, I have G5 pro and it would be great to have one more powerfull machine . So, my question is, is BadAxe really best Mobo for rock-solid configuration or some other works better. Forget about price and overclocking I'm asking for stabile and trustfull machine :P

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well i didn use badaxe2 but ... if You will use a google maybe (as me) You will find a bad opinions about this mobo too. I cant drop a link at the moment because i read it abot 3 months ago, but once again use a google

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well i didn use badaxe2 but ... if You will use a google maybe (as me) You will find a bad opinions about this mobo too. I cant drop a link at the moment because i read it abot 3 months ago, but once again use a google

 

Yes I "googled" and lurked all around before posting but to be honest I didn't found real answer. So, any other mobo as "best hackintosh mobo"?

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I don't care about sound and ethernet compatibility; I have external ethernet and sound that is better quality that works with OSX (and OSX86). I do care about video compatibility, and having onboard supported video is important (in case nvidia support is broken temporarily, etc). I have a board that works, but isn't overclockable, isn't quad or penryn compatible, and doesn't support the full 4gb of RAM (a cheap, compatible, bad choice, D945GCL).

 

Since G33, P35, and X37 chipsets all support current and at least some future processors, and G33 comes with additional onboard x3100 video (which Apple is likely to add compatibility for soon), I don't understand the difference. Is it for overclocking? Does Gigabyte et al use EFI like Intel?

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  • 3 months later...

I am running osx with an intel dq35jo executive series board, but sound and networking is not yet working for me. best of luck. You have to enable all of the features in bios fyi.

 

My head hurts from all the reading and searching. If anyone is running a Core2 Quad Q6600 successfully with OSX what motherboard are you running? I would prefer if the IDE controller worked, at least 2 channel sound, Network isn't as big an issue (my current wireless works with OSX) . I currently have Uphuck 10.4.9 v1.3 . I am going from an older system that currently runs OSX great so will be re-using some components (video, Wireless, HDD's if I can get IDE working).

 

Thanks :) Tripz

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