P43 and P45 are difference only in lane flexibility. P43 can have only one PCIe 16x 2.0 slot, while P45 can split it to two 8x.

p35 was also up there, could do DDR3 also and 1600 fSB with OC easily,
but, compared to p45 it lacks PCIE 2.0 support which... is probably not a big deal for a core 2.

I have a lot of Core2 motherboards ranging from the early C2D chipsets right through to the X48 Rampage Extreme and the EVGA 790i SLI PWM Digital and have found them to all be competent boards (Some better than others, some considerably worse) but if I had to pick one board that has had been stand out for reliability, compatibility and features its a Gigabyte P45t-USB3P board. (CPU support on this board is crazy, supports from the 90nm P4 505 processor right upto the mighty QX9770)

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-EP45T … USB3P-rev-10#ov <--- Dont let it being DDR3 scare you, its one of the late model boards and DDR3 compatibility is excellent.

This little board is just great and I recommend it highly if you ever come across one, its never missed a beat and is very competent at overclocking should you want to.

I will say the Halo boards are fun to play with but for general use they are overkill, they are also expensive to replace should one up and die, the EVGA 790i PWM board is one such board, replacing that board would be near impossible. I find X38/X48 to be hard to work with if you want to try BIOS modding, Intel for whatever reason decided that these two chipsets cannot work with a large range of Xeon 771 CPUs, any Xeon 771 CPU that supports SMP will never work on these chipsets.

To me it always looked light a fight between the mature DDR2 boards managing to squeeze 1850+ FSB and the early DDR3 looking shaky at 1600. Plus the extra latency penalty baked in. Probably don't have so much trouble finding decent DDR3 now though, whereas you'll pay through the nose for the best DDR2 that's still out there, unless you get lucky assembling a set out of dribs and drabs.

edit: btw got a low multi xeon turning up next week, guess I'll have to let you know which boards melt trying to hit 2000 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-21, 03:50:

To me it always looked light a fight between the mature DDR2 boards managing to squeeze 1850+ FSB and the early DDR3 looking shaky at 1600. Plus the extra latency penalty baked in. Probably don't have so much trouble finding decent DDR3 now though, whereas you'll pay through the nose for the best DDR2 that's still out there, unless you get lucky assembling a set out of dribs and drabs.

Early DDR 3 was ...pretty terrible yes, late DDR3 P45/X48 boards released near Nehalem had much better DDR3 support and they easily bypassed the late model DDR2 boards.

I have some DDR2 PC2-9600 1200 sticks and yeah they are nice but as you said also expensive, if you want a halo DDR2 board you can just grab a late model P35/P45 board and it'll be 99% as good as the X38/X48 DDR2 options without the halo price tag.

I have a somewhat troubled situation with p45 and ddr3, actually 2 motherboards died on me all of the sudden, I thought ending to think the problem was the cpu...
I also noticed that the overclock is less stable and flexible using ddr3, but I speak from the memory lover motherboard for msi (which supports both ddr2 and ddr3) probably a specific ddr3 motherboard will be better.

What is the most modern game you want to play on Win XP....

Doom 3 runs on my Core 2 / DDR2 4GB / 256MB GPU laptop, 60fps 1080p

I plan on making a Core 2 build for tasks that aren't as easy on my main PC (backing up floppies, firewire) and for having a nice build that can run XP now that my T61 ThinkPad sadly got decimated in an accident. Really wanna try out that new Supermium port for XP. I just really like the Core 2 platform, reliable and fun to experiment with.

Is it worth spending more to get a DDR3 board?

bobsmith wrote on 2024-02-21, 19:01:

Is it worth spending more to get a DDR3 board?

Which type of RAM do you have in your drawer?

Ignoring any performance differences for a second, the biggest advantage of DDR3, I would think, would be the fact that you can actually get 16 gigs (4x4) without going crazy trying to find 4 gig DDR2 desktop DIMMs. But... more than 4 gigs is useless for a retro XP system...

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-21, 23:08:

bobsmith wrote on 2024-02-21, 19:01:

Is it worth spending more to get a DDR3 board?

Which type of RAM do you have in your drawer?

Ignoring any performance differences for a second, the biggest advantage of DDR3, I would think, would be the fact that you can actually get 16 gigs (4x4) without going crazy trying to find 4 gig DDR2 desktop DIMMs. But... more than 4 gigs is useless for a retro XP system...

Agree ! and Do not use XP 64bit if you have any plans on messing with any DOS or old Win9x apps, they just won't work proper 😁