Hi all, Over the next few months I will be assembling the hardware for a new machine. I have been researching motherboards and have pretty much narrowed it down to either a: Gigabyte GA 965P DS3 or ASUS P5B. Any advice would be appreciated. Craig

Apart from a little nuance that makes my E6400 run substantially SLOWER when overclocked to 3.2GHz when running the F11 BIOS (which I overcome by running an earlier BIOS version), my DS3 has been an absolute champion of a motherboard - good price features and overclockability. Mine is 8 months old now, and I'm sure newer revisions of this board will be even more robust.Gary

You didn't ask, but how about an Asus P5K variant?scott s..

>You didn't ask, but how about an Asus P5K variant?>>scott s.>.>Thank you both for your input. I had just about settled on the Gigabyte board until scott mentioned the Asus P5K.Now I may have to change my mind and go with the P5k after watchingthe video review and looking at the specs here:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...9406&CatId=3355Lot's of features especially the ones supporting the upcoming45nm processors and DDR3.I have an ASUS A8N now and it has perfomed flawlessly so I guess I need to find some more reviews if there are any on the P5K as I probably won't be purchasing the board until later this summer as I'm trying to budget my expenses. scott......are you using the P5K ? Thanks,Craig

Craig,Take a look at the top three articles on this page: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/They test, among other things, the performance of DDR2 and DDR3 on the P35 and compare it to a P5B which was one of the best P965's on the market.Additionally, Intel is said to be reducing the prices of their processors July 22 of this year. Pay close attention to the above referenced article. Every CPU they used was able to reach an FSB of 1333 at default voltages. This could lead to a very inexpensive upgrade and an automatic overclock to boot. Regards,Jim KarnNOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Comput...rboards/?page=2The Comuptex convention is starting tomorrow and mfgs will begin showing off their versions of Intel's new X38 chipset. Probably the biggest deal with this board is support for PCI-e 2.0. This might become actually necessary real soon. Nvidia is starting to chat-up their upcoming 9800. It's supposed to be a triple, yes, three times the power of the 8800GTXYZ. That will be happening in time for the Christmas selling season. In the mean time, the 8800 is being adapted for laptops. That means a dual 8800, single card desktop version won't be long now. SLI two of those and have a quad 8800? . . . on your (post July 22nd) $250 quad core, G02 stepping, Q6600 running at 3.8 ghz? "Mission control, we're ready for launch." This is all starting to get out of hand!If you want something sooner though, the Intel's P35 is available now. Set a news alert to "Computex" and follow along this week. We may get some sort of availability announcement on this X38.

Thanks to all for the advice....please keep it coming as I'm sure there are a lot of folks undecided. Looks like for once maybe I'm upgrading at the right time. The improvements from Intel are coming fast and furious. My current rig is AMD but I've never been afraid to jump ship for performance at a reasonable price. Looks like a lot of reviews are just around the corner so I've got a couple months to digest it. Just now ordering the new case and the P/S comes 2nd. Craig

>Nvidia is>starting to chat-up their upcoming 9800. It's supposed to be a>triple, yes, three times the power of the 8800GTXYZ. That will>be happening in time for the Christmas selling season. Woohoo, I knew that if I kept that 9800 Pro long enough that it would come back into fashion! And being the Pro version, my old card might even be four times faster than a 8800GTX. ;)Gary