Hello Everyone, I have one final decsion to make before purchasing and assembling the new FSX machine. Having already bought 6 Gig of the Redline Mushkin 6-7-6-18 RAM and decided on the i7 950 CPU, I am agonising over whether to buy ASUS or Gigabyte for the mobo and GTX285 graphics card. I am hoping for some feedback from the many forum members who know so much more than me about the two brands. The mobos I was looking at are the ASUS P6T Delux V2 and the Gigabyte GA-EX58 Extreme. I know I can get 2 gig of memory on the Gigabyte 285. Is this needed for FSX?Regards,Stephen.

The two companies are pretty much the best mobo makers out there, although occasionally another manufacturer will release a part to critical acclaim. You won't go wrong with a mobo from either. The P6T seems to be the more popular of the two, and I used one to build my roomie's i7 920 system, but have Gigabyte mobos in both my desktops. As for the video card I'd say don't bother with Asus or Gigabyte there, nor with 2GB RAM. If you want the best of the best on Nvidia's side you need to look at Evga, XFX, and BFG.

The two companies are pretty much the best mobo makers out there, although occasionally another manufacturer will release a part to critical acclaim. You won't go wrong with a mobo from either. The P6T seems to be the more popular of the two, and I used one to build my roomie's i7 920 system, but have Gigabyte mobos in both my desktops. As for the video card I'd say don't bother with Asus or Gigabyte there, nor with 2GB RAM. If you want the best of the best on Nvidia's side you need to look at Evga, XFX, and BFG.

Thanks for the advice