They are great if you you need OC with SLI support

X48 have unofficial SLI support. I don't see a reason to pick up clunky nForce motherboards after all these years.

Yes the driver hack works fine. No point in getting most nforce boards today. Some are OK but not many. Only real point to is if you want to say SLI 6xx or new cards, if I recall the drive hack on;y works for 5xx and older cards. but sli with 6xx or newer cards is a to much for a C2 system if you ask me.

Jade Falcon wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Any motherboard will eventually display reliability issues under hard overclocking...

Very true, but some take overclocking better then others.

Depends what you're doing also, the board can be designed to do 150W CPUs at 1600mhz fsb, and it's not even breaking a sweat if you get your 65W 1333 fsb CPU going balls out at that.

Adrian_ wrote:

300$ wouldd be nuts, I bought a nice Abit IP-35 Pro for about 35$ and it overclocks damn well. 775 harware is dirt cheap these days. Good working mb's of the common crop hardly sell for $5-10 and they will soon be heading for the scrap...

That's a dime a dozen board nothing big about it, not the best over clocker no 16x 16x pci-e support. Not the best motherboard heatsinks.
its a mid range board at best. Still not a bad board, just far from the best.

Look for any ip45 or x38.x48 board and your be hard pressed to find any for less then 75$ used. New one can fetch upwards of 200$ with the rampage selling for around 200$ used. Even on HWbot where stuff sells cheap the rampage can go for a good bit.

Any Gigabyte X38/48 won't be much worse than the rampage and you can get those for like 40-50 bucks?

Jade Falcon wrote:

That's a dime a dozen board nothing big about it, not the best over clocker no 16x 16x pci-e support. Not the best motherboard h […]
Show full quote

Adrian_ wrote:

300$ wouldd be nuts, I bought a nice Abit IP-35 Pro for about 35$ and it overclocks damn well. 775 harware is dirt cheap these days. Good working mb's of the common crop hardly sell for $5-10 and they will soon be heading for the scrap...

That's a dime a dozen board nothing big about it, not the best over clocker no 16x 16x pci-e support. Not the best motherboard heatsinks.
its a mid range board at best. Still not a bad board, just far from the best.

Look for any ip45 or x38.x48 board and your be hard pressed to find any for less then 75$ used. New one can fetch upwards of 200$ with the rampage selling for around 200$ used. Even on HWbot where stuff sells cheap the rampage can go for a good bit.

I'm not sure how you define a mid-range board but having two full length PCI-E slots, 2 gigabit LAN, all solid-state capacitor design, heatpipe cooling for NB,SB&Mosfets plus useful features like the cmos reset switch on the I/O panel isn't exactly mid-range in my book.
Sure there are more recent 775 boards that may have advantages over the IP35-pro but this doesn't stop it to be up there with the best. I suppose you were talking about the plain IP35 board or even about the IP35E which are cheaper versions.

Sorry if I'm stepping on any toes but 75$ used for a top of the line 775 board is rather unrealistic, at least IMO.

P35 boards are not valued in general. Mainly due to PCI-E 1.0 and poor lane amount/its management.

and the VRM's suck on the abit ip35 4 phase low amperage fets. and the heatsink wile having pipes it used god offal pads and mounts. Then there was the somewhat poor 45mn quad support witch abit was known for on all their 775 boards. With some mods its more of a upper mid range board. But without any mods its mid range at best if not low end. It was even a seen as lower end board new. Grate value however as its not unheard of to find them new for 30-40$

martin939 wrote:

Any Gigabyte X38/48 won't be much worse than the rampage and you can get those for like 40-50 bucks?

Indeed gigabyte had alot of nice board back then, but the cooler schemes and layout could be alot better if you ask me.

EDIT:
For those that missed it I ended up buying a P5E64 WS Evolution, this board is like a step below the rampage if you ask me and no one seems to want much for them when they come up for sale.

Probably one of the worst High-End boards I've ever owned was the MSI P45D3 Platinum, it's only saving grace was that I literally got it for 10E because the seller could not confirm if it was actually working, although he was sure that it was a DDR3 RAM issue. I was happy enough to grab it and try it and it did run on my setup, but I should have been a little cautious with its compatibility.
It was a nightmare to get it to POST with more than a couple of sticks of DDR3 RAM or even 4GB sticks.

The idea was to build a Core2Quad with 8GB RAM and a nice GPU. I think only once did I actually get that board to recognize 8GB, so I just settled for 4GB RAM. I also did not have a Core 2 Quad available at the time, so I grabbed a modded E5450, which usually ran fine on most boards (especially brand name ones), but for some reason, it ran like a shit on that board. Seriously, it was simply unbearable how slow it was.
I could have probably edited the latest BIOS and added in support for the Xeon (it is relatively easy to do), but I just couldn't be bothered anymore, I was so furious with that system, so I ended up selling it to someone locally who wanted a cheap system for his son. I think he was pretty happy with it and we also had a nice talk because he noticed I was also carrying an Amiga 500 I was planning to give away to someone else 😀.

Which brings me to my final point, BIOS support. I had the latest stable one and still having the E5450 performing like it did. There was another, beta, BIOS which supposedly added UEFI functionality, at least in terms of offering a GUI with mouse support and such. I flashed that and... the board would not POST! I eventually got it to POST twice, one to test that beta BIOS, which was really awkward and another to flash it back to the latest one 🤣 .
I think it was like a more primitive version of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNMApW8AxWU

Anyway, I never looked back on that board, but nowadays I got my hands on an ASUS Maximus II Formula. I also have the following:
HEC big case from 2004
Core 2 Quad Q9550
6GB 800MHz (5-5-5-15) DDR2
GTX 285
Silverstone ST75F PSU

I think it'll make a killer system with an SSD 😁.

If that msi board was the one the supported both ddr2 and ddr3 it came with a set of ram cards, I believe they were terminators of some sort and they were needed for the system to work right.

Jade Falcon wrote:

and the VRM's suck on the abit ip35 4 phase low amperage fets. and the heatsink wile having pipes it used god offal pads and mounts. Then there was the somewhat poor 45mn quad support witch abit was known for on all their 775 boards. With some mods its more of a upper mid range board. But without any mods its mid range at best if not low end. It was even a seen as lower end board new. Grate value however as its not unheard of to find them new for 30-40$

Seriously now, if you beleve that removing thermal pads can be considered 'modding' a motherboard I guess we're on a totally different page here.
In my book having something as damn useful as a cmos reset switch on the back panel, or a 2 digit post code display on the mobo itself are VERY relevant features for a high end board, while dubious thermal pads are more like mere annoyances.

There's no need to try and talk down a board you obviously never used just to try and 'prove' that other 775 boards may be worth higher prices. I'm sure that if someone really wants a certain board they will decide to buy or not based on thir own budget and beliefs, regardless of what you and I believe to be fair prices for 775 boards 😉

If you already parted with those $300 enjoy the Rampage, i'm sure it's a great mobo if all you want is to consistently hit 600fsb. I tend to be interested in a totally different usage for a board of this age, if I was interested in holding oc records I'd probably find more merit in your approach 😀

Btw, I just bought for $2 a Gigabyte 775 board with both ddr2 and ddr3, no obvious damage but it's not even spinning the fans. I'm wondering how relevant would this be for defining the 775 boards 'market price' f I manage to get it fixed? 😊

IP35 was definitely on my short list of boards to buy back in the day, but I ended up with a Gigabyte P35 board. I just searched some reviews, and it looks like the IP35 Pro can do 400 FSB on a Q6600 just fine. Not much mention of Penryn overclocking, probably because people had already moved on to newer boards at the time.

The premium boards P45/X48/780i/790i boards can do 400 FSB min, and most can do 500+ FSB, but personally, I'm not going to push a 10 year old board super hard.

Edit: Pretty sure we're all aware that you can buy mainstream P35/P45 boards for super cheap. If you want performance you can buy a H110 board with a Sky/Kaby Lake CPU for cheap and run circles around any S775 setup. It's just about owning a piece of premium hardware that was best in class back in the day. As time goes on, it's going to be increasingly difficult to find boxed premium hardware like this.

That's a good point. From a collector's perspective the discussion is totally different, meaning that having the full package including original box, manuals, CD and so on becomes much more relevant.

Even premium LGA-1155/1156 boards are becoming expensive.

Maximus III (1156 P55) Extreme, super rare, none sold on eBay records recently. Only one is $400 BIN from China.
Maximus IV (1155 Z68) Extreme, more common, bare boards going for $120-160.
Maximus V (1155 Z77) Extreme, the best Asus LGA1155 (and arguably the best LGA1155) are $150-200 bare board.

Myself, I am starting to look for Rampage Extreme's. Already picked up a full boxed Rampage V Extreme ($150).

Adrian_ wrote:

Seriously now, if you beleve that removing thermal pads can be considered 'modding' a motherboard I guess we're on a totally dif […]
Show full quote

Jade Falcon wrote:

and the VRM's suck on the abit ip35 4 phase low amperage fets. and the heatsink wile having pipes it used god offal pads and mounts. Then there was the somewhat poor 45mn quad support witch abit was known for on all their 775 boards. With some mods its more of a upper mid range board. But without any mods its mid range at best if not low end. It was even a seen as lower end board new. Grate value however as its not unheard of to find them new for 30-40$

Seriously now, if you beleve that removing thermal pads can be considered 'modding' a motherboard I guess we're on a totally different page here.
In my book having something as damn useful as a cmos reset switch on the back panel, or a 2 digit post code display on the mobo itself are VERY relevant features for a high end board, while dubious thermal pads are more like mere annoyances.

There's no need to try and talk down a board you obviously never used just to try and 'prove' that other 775 boards may be worth higher prices. I'm sure that if someone really wants a certain board they will decide to buy or not based on thir own budget and beliefs, regardless of what you and I believe to be fair prices for 775 boards 😉

If you already parted with those $300 enjoy the Rampage, i'm sure it's a great mobo if all you want is to consistently hit 600fsb. I tend to be interested in a totally different usage for a board of this age, if I was interested in holding oc records I'd probably find more merit in your approach 😀

Btw, I just bought for $2 a Gigabyte 775 board with both ddr2 and ddr3, no obvious damage but it's not even spinning the fans. I'm wondering how relevant would this be for defining the 775 boards 'market price' f I manage to get it fixed? 😊

I have owned 3 ip35 pro's they aren't the best board, mid range at best. I also have owned a ix48, ix38, NI8 SLI, AS8 and even and abit ip45, a hand full of x38 Asus boards and x48 gigabyte boards, and a few dfi boards among many cheaper oem and Intel brand 775 boards boards.

The ip35 just is not a very good board. Cmos reset is something most mid rang name brand p35/45 and x38/48 board have, just hold the reset/power button if it dose not.A post board is something just about every abit board had since the sk487 days. And its just not the pads that sucked, the heatsinks and their mounts just did not cut it, the ip35 pro is prone to fet failure with over clocking of quads do to both the poor cooling and vrms. The heat sink are even anodized to look like copper but they aren't copper. The board also has stability trouble with 45nm quads with 8gb or ram or 2gb sticks at stock speeds and the cpu temp sensors dose not work right with 45mn cpu's, there is a bios patch that fixes that for most cpu's not not all.
Then we have the hard specks, 1333 max supported FSB (wile you can get higher with OC'ing) pcie v1 16x and pcie v1 4x on the second slot. max supported ram speed is 800mhz (can go higher with overclocking) ATA100 and not ata 133.

Oh and for the mods, its just not the heat pipe mod, vdrop control is not a option on the board if I recall nor was the voltage control the best when over clocking, Memory timings setting are limited among many other bios settings found on higher end boars.

And the big kicker, its prone to the ATX plug bruin out fault if you don't use the molex header on the board.

only good thing it has going for it is the price as you can pick them up for like 30-40$ new. at its price its a alright board, but that does not take away from the fact that its mid range at best.

EDIT:
Also what you use a board for means nothing. if I replace a top end sk370 with a newer 1.4ghz amd APU and it dose everything I want it to its not suddenly a top end system. And all this is being said by a die hard abit fan.

Again you're confusing it with IP35-E. The IP-35E (which has just one PCI-E slot )requires the molex plug to be used unless you want to fry the ATX connector. The IP35-Pro only needs the molex plug to be connected if you're using the second full length PCI-E slot.

I remember that back in the day a lot of overclockers bought the IP35-E and were postulating with funny confidence about the whole IP35 range based only on their experience with the cheapest model.

Now, the part about PCI-E 1.1, 1333 max supported FSB and so on is relevant for pretty much all P35 board, how exactly is it making this particular board to be mid-range? In my book what makes a board entry level, mid range or top level are the features, quality of components and so on. What you just said is like saying that a certain Lx board is entry level because it doesn't have Bx characteristics 😁

Anyway, there's no point in debating this further, I'm quite pleased with my purchase I hope you're also pleased with yours.

I never understood why you would overclock and older system vs putting together a newer system that would do a better job without needing to be overclocked. As older components continue to fail overclocking just further increases the rarity even more.

As far as the board is concerned, because I dont overclock much there wouldn't be any reason for me to pay a premium for a board like this. Don't get me wrong I'd love to have one, but even 200 for any motherboard (even a brand new modern one) is hard for me to rationalize to myself.

dexvx wrote:

Even premium LGA-1155/1156 boards are becoming expensive. […]
Show full quote

Even premium LGA-1155/1156 boards are becoming expensive.

Maximus III (1156 P55) Extreme, super rare, none sold on eBay records recently. Only one is $400 BIN from China.
Maximus IV (1155 Z68) Extreme, more common, bare boards going for $120-160.
Maximus V (1155 Z77) Extreme, the best Asus LGA1155 (and arguably the best LGA1155) are $150-200 bare board.

Myself, I am starting to look for Rampage Extreme's. Already picked up a full boxed Rampage V Extreme ($150).

... I prefer the Asrock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional ,MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming or the Rampage IV over the rampage V. The Asrock is the best overclocking out of the 3 - got 4.8 GHz on water out of a 3770k using one of these babies.

I like the MSI GD65 lineup in terms of functionalty.

However, I think Asus has a good naming concept with their Rampage/Maximus/Crosshair lineup with the clear progression of things (although lately the suffixes have just been confusing as hell... Ranger, Code, Apex, etc). It'd be interesting to own a stack of Maximus I-XX boards 10 years down the line.

Personally I really like Biostar Tpower P45 board, but it's far from perfect (BIOS, features, bugs). Initial price was good (bought it new), but today it's far from reasonable for such motherboard. Great OC though.