CPU/Mobo GA-B75M-D3H or GA-H61M-DS2 for tight budget.

[guptavis]

Hello all,

i am in the middle of building a RIG. due to some constraints i already have these components:

Proc: i7-2600
PSU: Seasonic S12II 430W
RAM: Gskill Ripjaws 4GB 1600MHz
Monitor: BenQ g2220HD
local cabinet
will add a midrange 5-6k GPU after 2-3 months when i have the cash.

Now for motherboard, i am faced with a choice. Earlier plan was to get GA-B75M-D3H Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

but im facing severe cash shortage so looking for a lower cost alternative. How about this GA-H61M-DS2 Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

I know ill be missing USB3 and SATA III. But i dont have any USB3 device or SSD. Wont buy atleast for the coming 1 year or more.
At the most i will add one more 4GB RAM module so the 2 ram slots are not a problem.
I could sell this and get a new motherboard when i need sata3 and usb3 etc.

But the RAM speed supported on H61 is 1333MHz so my 1600MHz module will have to run slower or is there a workaround for this, can the ram alone be made to run at 1600MHz? how much of a penalty will this be?


Any other problem with the H61 board? will it affect the working of the processor or gaming?
This saving of Rs 2k will help me get a better GPU.
Please advise which would be a better option. I am going to buy within a couple of days.

 

[sato1986]

I know ill be missing USB3 and SATA III. But i dont have any USB3 device or SSD. Wont buy atleast for the coming 1 year or more.
At the most i will add one more 4GB RAM module so the 2 ram slots are not a problem.
I could sell this and get a new motherboard when i need sata3 and usb3 etc.

Spot on. A very wise decision to save money for the GPU which will matter more than the USB3/SATA3.

On the same lines, you can have a look at ASUS P8H61 M LX3 ASUS P8H61 M LX3 P8H61-M LX3/SI ?????? ???????, ????????? ? ????????????? ? ??????? | i-shop ASUS too. It has a much better BIOS, an extra PCI slot, and 2 more USB ports, at a price difference of Rs. 200-300.
You'll be able to hold on to this one more calmly. H67 n higher chipsets are really not essential if you have a non-K processor. 1600Mhz and 1333Mhz will make no difference to performance, you won't be able to overclock anyways.

 

[Jakob]

Go for Gigabyte GA H61M D2H-2.8k it's a vfm board,Also try not to go for Asus as their A.S.S is famous for poor service.

 

[DarkAngel]

Go for Gigabyte GA H61M D2H-2.8k it's a vfm board,Also try not to go for Asus as their A.S.S is famous for poor service.

The D2H costs ~3.2k in FK. Its the DS2 that costs ~2.9k. The DS2 lacks even the DVI port. Its better to spend Rs.300 extra and go for the D2H since it has both DVI and HDMI ports. At this point of time even the most basic of monitors have a DVI port and one should make use of that to get better picture quality.

http://www.flipkart.com/gigabyte-ga...id=reco_pp_same_motherboard_beb_motherboard_1

If one doesnt want the HDMI then atlease the S2P for ~Rs.3048. It has DVI-D and costs ~Rs.160 more than the DS2.

http://www.flipkart.com/gigabyte-ga...icmpid=reco_pp_same_motherboard_motherboard_2

 

[Jakob]

Thanks for the correction,Got little mixed up with the prices of D2H and DS2,Though suggestion was D2H.

The D2H costs ~3.2k in FK. Its the DS2 that costs ~2.9k. The DS2 lacks even the DVI port. Its better to spend Rs.300 extra and go for the D2H since it has both DVI and HDMI ports. At this point of time even the most basic of monitors have a DVI port and one should make use of that to get better picture quality.

Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2H Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

If one doesnt want the HDMI then atlease the S2P for ~Rs.3048. It has DVI-D and costs ~Rs.160 more than the DS2.

Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2P Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

 

[cranky]

The only benefits of the 7 series chipsets over the H61 are the USB3 and SATA3 ports, higher memory speeds (1600 RAM will run at 1600) and PCIe 3.0. The features you will miss are the latter two, which your CPU is capable of but the H61 is not.

Though at first blush it seems that the performance offered by the higher RAM speed is not much, in reality there is a healthy performance margin offered by the IGP as your memory speed increases. I think Anandtech had some tests revealing the extent to which slow memory cramps the IGP, and it was quite clear that DDR3 1600 is the sweet spot between price and performance. If you will never use the IGP, the slower memory will probably not result in a big performance loss. I say probably because I notice quite a drop going from 1600 to 1333. 1333 to 1066 doesn't feel as bad as this drop.

PCIe 3.0 will not be of much use for GPUs below about 20k so I assume that will not be an issue here either. You may choose to build a hobbled rig but know that it will forever be limping along and holding back everything else. The difference between the two boards is not 2k, it's 1.5k and your loss on a potential sale/repurchase later will offset the differences anyway.

I don't see you making a huge jump in GPU performance (at least, not one that is visible during gameplay) at a cost differential of 1.5k. Rather get a card that you can overclock like crazy to cover the fps difference, or lie back and not worry abut a 4fps difference while playing games.

 

[ALPHA17]

Though at first blush it seems that the performance offered by the higher RAM speed is not much, in reality there is a healthy performance margin offered by the IGP as your memory speed increases. I think Anandtech had some tests revealing the extent to which slow memory cramps the IGP, and it was quite clear that DDR3 1600 is the sweet spot between price and performance.

PCIe 3.0 will not be of much use for GPUs below about 20k so I assume that will not be an issue here either.

That be for AMD Llano chips and iGP, Sire. For the Intel Sandy-Bridge the performance difference iGP-wise is not so exacerbated but overall performance whether you over-clock OR not is improved. Also, over-clocking RAM in Sandy-Bridge / Ivy-Bridge builds OR having extremely high frequency / lower latency RAM modules in the build is also not a great performance enhancer; 1600MHz is the 'sweet-spot' for price / performance.

Here are the links --> AnandTech - Sandy Bridge Memory Scaling: Choosing the Best DDR3 / DDR3 SDRAM for Sandy Bridge: Choosing the Best Memory for LGA1155 Platform - X-bit labs.

Sandy Bridge's improved memory controller has all but eliminated the need for extreme memory bandwidth, at least for this architecture. It's only when you get down to DDR3-1333 that you see a minor performance penalty. The sweet spot appears to be at DDR3-1600, where you will see a minor performance increase over DDR3-1333 with only a slight increase in cost.

Memory bandwidth does scale with CPU clock speed; however, it still doesn't translate into any meaningful real-world performance. The sweet spot still appears to be DDR3-1600. All of the extra performance gained by overclocking almost certainly comes from the CPU overclock itself and not from the extra memory bandwidth.

Finally, although the effects of low latency memory can be seen in our bandwidth tests, they don't show any real world advantage over their higher latency (ahem, cheaper) counterparts. None of the real-world tests performed showed any reason to prefer low latency over raw speed.

Even though there's merely a $34 price difference between the fastest and slowest memory tested today, I still don't believe there's any value in the more expensive memory kits on the Sandy Bridge platform. Once you have enough bandwidth (DDR3-1600 at a small $9-$10 price premium), there's just not enough of a performance increase beyond that to justify the additional cost, even when it's only $34 between 4GB kits. Once you jump to the 8GB kits, the price difference for CL9 DDR3-1600 is a mere $8, but it becomes much more pronounced at $92 to move to DDR3-2133. We simply can’t justify such a price difference based on our testing.

Long story short, 1600MHz CL-9 RAM modules on a Sandy /Ivy-Bridge build are more than enough, 1333MHz means a small hit in performance and spending for RAM modules with frequencies above ~1866MHz means you have a lot of cash to liquidate.

And for the most part PCIe 3.0 slots do not mean a great performance improvement even in top-tier cards like the HD7970, the only direct advantage is a slight improvement in compute performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa / http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/10.

Cannot comment on how the Kepler's will react but they are already pretty strung up against the AMD HD 7*** series cards when it comes to compute.

 

[cranky]

^^I think the point is that he already has the memory and the suggestion was geared at not shortchanging his existing components.

 

[guptavis]

Hello all, thanks for all the inputs, i forgot to mention that Im getting the DS2 locally for Rs2500 (shop has last piece). Everything else is flipkart, theitwares etc price.

Also i see that PCIe 3.0 wont matter for a low end GPU. So only thing is slower RAM and a little better GPU or vice versa.
Also DarkAngel has given another two options as H61M-S2P at 3048 and H61M-D2H at 3233. so more confusion.

The D2H costs ~3.2k in FK. Its the DS2 that costs ~2.9k. The DS2 lacks even the DVI port. Its better to spend Rs.300 extra and go for the D2H since it has both DVI and HDMI ports. At this point of time even the most basic of monitors have a DVI port and one should make use of that to get better picture quality.

If one doesnt want the HDMI then atlease the S2P for ~Rs.3048. It has DVI-D and costs ~Rs.160 more than the DS2.

Thanks Dark Angel, im not planning on using HDMI. Dont have a LCD TV and in case i need to watch movies i have an HDMI port on my laptop.
i do plan to get a dGPU (hopefully), in that case i will use the DVI port of GPU. Is DVI picture quality much better than VGA? Will this make a difference while reselling maybe?
So what do you recommend DS2 -2500 or S2P -3048 or B75MD3H -4399 ?

The only benefits of the 7 series chipsets over the H61 are the USB3 and SATA3 ports, higher memory speeds (1600 RAM will run at 1600) and PCIe 3.0. The features you will miss are the latter two, which your CPU is capable of but the H61 is not.

The difference between the two boards is not 2k, it's 1.5k and your loss on a potential sale/repurchase later will offset the differences anyway.

I don't see you making a huge jump in GPU performance (at least, not one that is visible during gameplay) at a cost differential of 1.5k. Rather get a card that you can overclock like crazy to cover the fps difference, or lie back and not worry abut a 4fps difference while playing games.

as i stated I am getting the DS2 locally for Rs2500, so the difference is 2k. I dont worry about 4fps as long as its playable. not very demanding on graphic detail. never had a dGPU before. So whats your take with a diff of 2k?

Long story short, 1600MHz CL-9 RAM modules on a Sandy /Ivy-Bridge build are more than enough, 1333MHz means a small hit in performance and spending for RAM modules with frequencies above ~1866MHz means you have a lot of cash to liquidate.

Cannot comment on how the Kepler's will react but they are already pretty strung up against the AMD HD 7*** series cards when it comes to compute.

Thanks Alpha17, I already have the 1600MHz ram. not going to go nvidia. probably something like 6670 or 6770.
you didnt give a verdict about which board do you suggest, DS2 or S2P or B75D3H ?

 

[ALPHA17]

Thanks Alpha17, I already have the 1600MHz ram. not going to go nvidia. probably something like 6670 or 6770.
you didnt give a verdict about which board do you suggest, DS2 or S2P or B75D3H ?

I would stick to the B75 as overtime all component values will depreciate and the already cheap H61 really won't fetch you anything (might as well keep it as a spare).

In the end it is your choice and more importantly your budget, so we can only advise, not judge your decisions. Cheerio!