I can't comment on the chipsets, but there must be at least one that does 1600 MHz FSB, as the C2Q 9770 has a 1600 FSB. Seems logical that such a board would use DDR3.

P45 or X48.

P45 officially supports FSB up to 1333 but will do 1600 (for QX9770, or just overclocking).
X48 supports 1600 officially.

When it comes to RAM, X48 supports DDR2 up to 1066 and DDR3 up to 1333. P45 only up to 800/1066 respectively.
Unofficially, high-end boards on either chipset will support DDR2 up to 1200 and DDR3 up to 1600.

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-19, 15:25:

P45 or X48. […]
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P45 or X48.

P45 officially supports FSB up to 1333 but will do 1600 (for QX9770, or just overclocking).
X48 supports 1600 officially.
When it comes to RAM, X48 supports DDR2 up to 1066 and DDR3 up to 1333. P45 only up to 800/1066 respectively.
Unofficially, high-end boards on either chipset will support DDR2 up to 1200 and DDR3 up to 1600.

Some P45's are more capable than that. My Asus P5Q3 comes with the following specifications:
CPU Support
Socket LGA 775
Intel Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo / Pentium dual core / Celeron dual core / Celeron Processors
Compatible with Intel 05B / 05A / 06 Processors
1600 / 1333 / 1066 / 800 MHz System Bus

Chipset
Intel P45 / ICH10R

Memory
Four DDR3 dual channel memory sockets
DDR3 1800 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz nonECC, unbuffered DIMMS
Up to 4GB per DIMM with a maximum of 16GB

Have a Asus P5QL P41 with CoreDuo E8400 Geforce 9700. Is rock solid XP/7 machine for 15 years. Will really be depressed, if it will break someday.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-02-19, 16:11:

Have a Asus P5QL P41 with CoreDuo E8400 Geforce 9700. Is rock solid XP/7 machine for 15 years. Will really be depressed, if it will break someday.

Hope it serves you long and well. My Core 2 system went through two P5Q PROs, and is currently on a low-end Gigabyte G41 board, just to work, sort of. I wonder if it's a matter of luck, or higher-end chipsets dying faster, or Core 2 Quad CPUs (mine is a QX9650) stressing the board more.

My board of choice for Windows XP is my P45 based Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P. Currently running it with a Core 2 Duo E8500. The FSB supports 1600 MHz, and officially supports up to 16GB of DDR2 memory at 1366 MHz. Not DDR3 but still a fantastic board. Looks like it even got editors choice on the AnandTech article for it back in 2009.

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-19, 16:41:

Hope it serves you long and well. My Core 2 system went through two P5Q PROs, and is currently on a low-end Gigabyte G41 board, just to work, sort of. I wonder if it's a matter of luck, or higher-end chipsets dying faster, or Core 2 Quad CPUs (mine is a QX9650) stressing the board more.

These times my motherboar was always Asus. Never OCd. And yes, all enthusiast and high end stuff usually dies sooner. More heat, more power. Hey I know exactly why the new trend is mini PCs. People who use the computer to surf the net and play older games do not need an expencive hot noisy big radiator in their house that draws lots of power.

TheMLGladiator wrote on 2024-02-19, 16:56:

The FSB supports 1600 MHz, and officially supports up to 16GB of DDR2 memory at 1366 MHz. Not DDR3 but still a fantastic board.

Were you able to find 4x4 gigs of DDR2 to put in there? I have an Asus P5QL-E that I've had forever... and it's always had 8 gigs. Could never find, at least affordably, a way to get more RAM in there back when it was running 7 64-bit. Now it's a mostly neglectedish retroish system so it doesn't need more than 8 gigs... but... I will say, while DDR2 saved a ton of money when I got the board (especially since I was swapping around DDR2 with other systems/boards/left over parts/etc), the inability to get more RAM in there became that board's biggest issue...

X38 is also not a bad contender. I find very little in performance between X38 and X48 boards generally.

I think for me the standout feature among Core 2 boards would be readily available fully functional BIOSs with support for 45nm 771 Xeons. 😀

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-02-19, 17:07:

Hey I know exactly why the new trend is mini PCs. People who use the computer to surf the net and play older games do not need an expencive hot noisy big radiator in their house that draws lots of power.

I don't think those are the people who are driving the mini PC trend... those people have either switched to low-end laptops long ago, or gone mostly smartphone-centric...

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-19, 19:05:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-02-19, 17:07:

Hey I know exactly why the new trend is mini PCs. People who use the computer to surf the net and play older games do not need an expencive hot noisy big radiator in their house that draws lots of power.

I don't think those are the people who are driving the mini PC trend... those people have either switched to low-end laptops long ago, or gone mostly smartphone-centric...

Some maybe, but for productivity nothing beats a huge-ass monitor you can look at without using a magnifying glass. And it's no coincidence most of those mini PCs have VESA mounts so you can slap them on the back of such monitors. All the screen real estate of a PC with no big hot heavy noisy box next to it. It will even run most vintage stuff nicely using DOSbox 😜

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-19, 19:05:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-02-19, 17:07:

Hey I know exactly why the new trend is mini PCs. People who use the computer to surf the net and play older games do not need an expencive hot noisy big radiator in their house that draws lots of power.

I don't think those are the people who are driving the mini PC trend... those people have either switched to low-end laptops long ago, or gone mostly smartphone-centric...

I think mini PC trend is driven by the affordability created by economy of scale caused by the demand for point of sale computers.

douglar wrote on 2024-02-19, 19:53:

I think mini PC trend is driven by the affordability created by economy of scale caused by the demand for point of sale computers.

And fundamentally, by the fact that everything that used to require big cases and expansion potential is... basically gone. No more removable storage (floppy, optical, even flash memory cards are largely gone). No more expansion cards for basically anything. Fixed storage has shrunk dramatically (an NVMe drive is a lot smaller than a 3.5" hard drive...).

The only thing that really still requires expansion is... big fancy GPUs for gaming. And funny enough, high-end motherboards today are focused on that and don't even really have much in the way of PCI-E slots for other things. And same with cases.

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-19, 17:57:

TheMLGladiator wrote on 2024-02-19, 16:56:

The FSB supports 1600 MHz, and officially supports up to 16GB of DDR2 memory at 1366 MHz. Not DDR3 but still a fantastic board.

Were you able to find 4x4 gigs of DDR2 to put in there? I have an Asus P5QL-E that I've had forever... and it's always had 8 gigs. Could never find, at least affordably, a way to get more RAM in there back when it was running 7 64-bit. Now it's a mostly neglectedish retroish system so it doesn't need more than 8 gigs... but... I will say, while DDR2 saved a ton of money when I got the board (especially since I was swapping around DDR2 with other systems/boards/left over parts/etc), the inability to get more RAM in there became that board's biggest issue...

No, I use the board exclusively for Windows XP, so I have 2x2GB of DDR2 instead. The sticks are only 800 MHz unfortunately, but it's what I had lying around. The DIMMS do seem to be very reliable, though (SK hynix branded modules IIRC).

Performance is motherboard dependent. ie. cheap Gigabyte P45 overclocks better dual core FSB than most x38 boards but a good ddr3 x38 still wins if it can overclock to same FSB ~465+. "The best" depends what cpu you're going to run because FSB overclock limits are different between quads/duals.
I'd rank chipsets by performance:
X48
Nvidia i790
X38
Nvidia i780, i750
P45
P35

Nvidia boards have a habit of dying, chipset just disintegrates so finding a properly working board may be difficult 😁

timsdf wrote on 2024-02-20, 03:27:

Nvidia boards have a habit of dying, chipset just disintegrates so finding a properly working board may be difficult 😁

I remember reading once that they were susceptible to power surges on the USB ports. Any truth to that?

paradigital wrote on 2024-02-19, 18:02:

X38 is also not a bad contender. I find very little in performance between X38 and X48 boards generally.

They are literally identical.

I had an Asus P5QL Pro with the P43 chipset (as I recall). Ran an E8400 CPU and DD2-800 RAM on it with Windows XP and later with Windows 7. Never had any issues with it. I later replaced the CPU with a Q6600 overclocked to 3 GHz. Still not sure which one actually offered the best performance.

I'm planning on resurrecting that system again for playing my older games.