Please help pick chipset for gaming build ...

[graffen]

Now that the GeForce 8800 GT has arrived, I feel that I can move forward to buy and build my next personal gaming machine.

I would like to take a fairly large leap from my Prescott 3.0/925X/socket 775 to a quad core. I'll be discarding the motherboard.

My budget is as follows:
(c) quad core -- $280 (Core 2 Quad)
(a) motherboard -- $150
(b) memory 2GB -- $120

I must admit being dizzied by the current chipset offerings. There are so many chipsets offered by Intel, nVidia, others, that I don't really know even which ones I should be looking at for a gaming build.

Your advice much appreciated. Even if you can just point me in the direction of a motherboard you think fits my budget and gaming requirements, I would be grateful .

Thanks.

 

[undeclared]

If I were you, I'd just pick a generic P35 motherboard (tons of choices -- Asus, Gigabyte, etc...) and reasonably priced.

Alternatively, there is 650i and 680i LT motherboards that will also fit into your price range for quite a good priceerformance ratio...

The P35 chipset is the latest non-SLI intel chipset. It's reliable, great overclocker, and you can get either DDR2 or DDR3 support on it (watch out to make sure it's DDR2 in your case.. DDR3 is too much money IMO). I even think there might be a hybrid one with 2 DDR2 and 2 DDR3 (so you get your 2gb of ddr2 now.. and when you want to switch to DDR3 later, you can just pop in 2-4GB DDR3 in 2 sticks.)

The P35 also will support the next gen of Intel procs (think Penryn), so it is a good choice.

680i LT is the best choice if you don't think you'll be upgrading the CPU or ram anytime soon, but you want a decent price, and true 16x SLI support..

 

[graffen]

Thank you, xtwells. All of that info is extremely helpful !!

 

[UPS]

Originally posted by: graffen

The P35 chipset is the latest non-SLI intel chipset. The P35 also will support the next gen of Intel procs (think Penryn), so it is a good choice.

I'm looking for a motherboard which can do SLi for my two 8800GT, and that can take on a penryn and DDR3 in the future.

Is there something that as all those caracteristics?

Thx