Need some motherboard advice please

[LintMan]

I'm looking to put together a fairly high performance system and am feeling overwhelmed by the motherboard choices. I've read things saying Intel's 975 chipset has the top performance, with the 680i very close, and other things saying that the 965 is unquestionably better. Are the differences large enough to matter much, in either case?

System thoughts:
- C2D E6700 CPU
- 8800GTX video card - just one, no SLI now or ever
- 4 x 1 GB DDR2 800 RAM (ram budget $500 total, open to advice on brand, specs)

Motherboard desires:
- rather not spend over $250.
- I have no interest in SLI, but as long as it provides at least one 16x PCI-X slot, it's OK.
- stability is top importance, and I'm not a hardcore OC'er, but I'd love to have flexible overclocking ability to experiment with.
- at least 6 SATA, 6 USB, 1 firewire, 1 PATA, 1 floppy
- at least one 10/100/1000 ethernet port
- don't care about on board audio or video.

 

[Conky]

I have been researching the motherboard offers for weeks and here is my recommendation. The Gigabyte P965-DS3. It has everything you want except the firewire and you can add a card for that.

I have a DS3 on it's way to me. You can bank on hearing my experiences with this board when I receive it. I am aiming for 3.2Ghz stable and I will be happy as a clam. 🙂