Confused about motherboards

[Static EMP]

I'm in the market to build my own computer, but it's been awhile and I haven't kept up. I'm building from the ground up, and obviously I have to start with a motherboard. I want to compare different motherboards, but there's so many specs that confuse me, like chipsets, etc. What is the difference between chipsets (other than the fact that different types work for Intel and others for AMD)? For example, I see names like nForce and Crossfire and I get confused.

When comparing motherboards, if I want to make sure I get great performance with high-end software, especially games, what should I be looking at?

 

[pkrush]

First of all, do you want an AMD or Intel CPU (98% of people on these forums reccomend AMD), are you planning on overclocking, and how much are you willing to spend?

 

[morrisbj]

Assuming you go with the AMD platform (which as the previous poster pointed out, nearly everyone here will suggest that) then the nForce4 chipsets are widely considered the best right now. If you really like ATI however, you should look into a Crossfire board so you can support their version of SLI. ULi also has a new chipset coming out that is supposed to compete with nForce4, but any support for crossfire or sli on that chipset would have to be on the video card manufacturer's end, so that doesn't seem to be a good answer yet. On Intel stuff, I couldn't even begin tell you what is what.

 

[wanderer27]

How soon are you looking at putting this together ?

I ask this because AMD is coming out with the M2 Socket next year (as opposed to 939 or 754). M2 will also be using DDR2 Memory instead of DDR.

I'm not sure, but I think Intel may be coming out with a different Socket next year as well.

Personnally, I'm hoping to skip M2 altogether - I'm not overly impressed with DDR2 at the moment.