What is the significant difference

[ssjones]

Hi guys

Can anyone tell me any significant difference it would make with respect to gaming between the Asus P5Q with Intel P45 chipset and MSI P45 Neo-F with Intel P45 chipset mobo with HD 4850 card.

[nitesh mehta]

Well, I have never used a MSI Board before and I have heard that its northbridge heatsink are not too fancy also. Where else, I like Asus P5Q and one of my friend has that board and he is running a hd 4870 graphics card on it playing high end games like Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead without any lag or so with 2gb 800mhz ram.

[Sebastian.j]

As the name suggests, the P45 is a progression from the P35 chipset - and a minor one at that. The significant difference is support for Intel's 45nm processors, but that's no big deal as almost all modern P35 boards are manufacturer-tweaked to support the newer CPUs already. There's also support for PCI Express 2.0, doubling the bandwidth of the original PCI Express specification, which Intel previously only offered in its X38 chipset.

From Asus' point of view, however, the P45's most interesting feature is its ability, like the P35, to support either DDR2 or DDR3 RAM, and the P5Q series includes both DDR2 and DDR3 boards. Officially, the P45 only supports DDR3 at up to 1,066MHz, but by sharpening up the electronics, Asus has persuaded the chipset to support DDR3 frequencies up to 1,600MHz as well.

So the combination looks better for gaming as well.

[gygabite]

The P45 chipset is good for gaming.

As for the P5Q itself, the 24Pin connector on that motherboard is in very very poor place IMO. Personally I'd go with the P5Q Pro or the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R.

[Oswald]

you Can opt For Both whichever you Get For less Purchase as both the Motherboard Have Identical Specifications You wont Have Any problem.