I'm building a new pc off the e8400, I'll be running a G92 8800 GTS, 2 250gb 7500rmp hd, and 1 150gb 10000rmp for the os, X-fi sound card, vista ultimate 64, and 4gb corsair xms2 ram (or best compatible with mb). I am just looking for the best board for this setup as I am mainly going for performance, sound and picture quality, but also gaming. So I was wondering from everyones experience here what board would be best suited for that setup and achieving some nice oc speeds and offers great performance and a lot of expansion ability.

ASUS P5K-E WIFI
GIGAYBYTE P35 DS3R
ABIT IP35 PRO

And all of those are compatible right out of the box with this processor?

Gigabyte P35 DS3L is also a good choice if you don't plan to SLI. Worked perfect with my E8400 right out of the box.

"Compatible right out of the box" as in "will boot". Flashing the BIOS may still be a good idea even if it works perfect - it might just fix bugs you haven't found yet, or make something go faster. Of course, it may mess up something that used to work, so read the notes carefully to decide whether to flash or not.

Are you planning to use a 24" monitor or bigger and play things like Crysis? If yes, I suggest an X38 or 780i motherboard and a large PSU, so you can do Crossfire or SLI.

Are you planning to use 3 or 4 monitors? If yes, the aBit IP35Pro is good because you can have two video cards in it, each with 2 monitors, but the GA-P35-DS3L and GA-P35-DS3R won't do. GA-P35-DS4 will do, if you like Gigabyte.

Are you going to have lots of hard disks, maybe a RAID array? GA-P35-DS3L is limited to 4 SATA and 2 IDE devices and doesn't support RAID.

I was planning on playing just 1 monitor and a 22", would consider 24" if price was right on it, but trying to stay with budget with the new system.

If you want compatibility out of the box with sli you will need a nvidia 7 series chipset board.

This is a good combination:

EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i, $250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813188024

OCZ Silencer 750W Quad SLI Ready Power Supply - Black $138 + $12
http://www.buy.com/prod/ocz-silenc [...] 39780.html

With two of those 8800GTS G92 512MB cards you might as well get a 24" monitor and play most games at 1920x1200.

Just checking - you do know to avoid the 8800GTS 320Mb and the 640MB, right?

What would be my best mb option to couple with this cpu for extreme performance, some internet gaming, high quality sound and picture...i could probably use my pentium 4 to flash the bios to a compatible driver if it wasn't out of box compatible.

i have that psu in the 700w series

yes going with 512

The EVGA 780i is a motherboard, so I just answered that one OK, if you really mean extreme performance, get the eVGA 780i mobo and three 8800GTX cards and an Enermax Galaxy 1000W. You can't combine three 8800GTS cards, it only works with GTX). But this will cost a fortune, and it only makes sense with a 24" monitor or larger, not a 22".

Why not a 680i board?

Well the setup I'll be running is a G92 8800 GTS, 2 250gb 7500rmp hd, and 1 150gb 10000rmp for the os, X-fi sound card, vista ultimate 64, and 4gb corsair xms2 ram. I am just looking for the best board to support, price really isn't that much of an issue because I want it to be an upgradeable board so if I decide to swap out the cpu down the line for one of the quad 45nm the board still has all the expansion slots and compatibility I would want with the latest software. Thanks for all the help so far!

I bought the ASUS P5E to pair with my E8400 2 days ago and had no problem. It saw my cpu straight away. 1333 FSB. The only think i changed in BIOS was DRAM Frequency to 1200MHz for my new Transcend 2X1GB 1200MHz RAM kit (Windows XP FTW) and that worked with no hassle as well