Just a quick comment regarding your statment "The problem is that I haven't heard anyone say "yah" or "nah" to the ASUS Board. I thought the motherboard was the most important component. If I wanted nForce4 am I making a mistake by purchasing the ASUS A8N SLI now?".
Asus is a fine brand BUT, a name brand motherboard manufacturer (like Asus) is not always a requirement for a good build, nor is it the most important component. The best motherboard, memory or any other component for that matter is usually compromised by cheaper components elsewhere within a system. As an example, even an Asus moterboard will NOT perform well with a weak power supply, but a less expensive motherboard will perform fine with a good power supply. At least from my experiance a good build has no one part that is subpar when compared to the rest of the system. Asus and other well known brands usually have more options in the BIOS for performance and overclocking settings, if that is what you want then those brands are what you need to look at. If you are less interested in tweaking a system then just about any brand will do. Also with the integrated memory controller on the A64 line performance differances between chipsets are minimal. If you look around, the touted nVidia nForce 3or4 does not dominate the benchmarks like its older brethren the nForce 2, I am not saying that its a bad chipset but its selling points have more to do with its feature set (and the mindset of people that associate its performance against other chipsets with reguards to how it compared in the socket "A" environment).
Also you comment on getting back to a normal upgrade routine, since I dont know what you think a "normal upgrade routine" is I still have to wonder if a SLI motherboard is something you will use. I still think you might be better served using that money elsewhere, but thats my opinion, spend your money how you see fit. Good luck with your build.
Asus is a fine brand BUT, a name brand motherboard manufacturer (like Asus) is not always a requirement for a good build, nor is it the most important component. The best motherboard, memory or any other component for that matter is usually compromised by cheaper components elsewhere within a system. As an example, even an Asus moterboard will NOT perform well with a weak power supply, but a less expensive motherboard will perform fine with a good power supply. At least from my experiance a good build has no one part that is subpar when compared to the rest of the system. Asus and other well known brands usually have more options in the BIOS for performance and overclocking settings, if that is what you want then those brands are what you need to look at. If you are less interested in tweaking a system then just about any brand will do. Also with the integrated memory controller on the A64 line performance differances between chipsets are minimal. If you look around, the touted nVidia nForce 3or4 does not dominate the benchmarks like its older brethren the nForce 2, I am not saying that its a bad chipset but its selling points have more to do with its feature set (and the mindset of people that associate its performance against other chipsets with reguards to how it compared in the socket "A" environment).
Also you comment on getting back to a normal upgrade routine, since I dont know what you think a "normal upgrade routine" is I still have to wonder if a SLI motherboard is something you will use. I still think you might be better served using that money elsewhere, but thats my opinion, spend your money how you see fit. Good luck with your build.
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