Hi folks -

Love Tom's Hardware, but I have some questions that I could not answer via the formal reviews and guides.

I am planning to upgrade my rig over the next few months. I just ordered an eVGA 8800 GT (great sale going on thru 4/31 by the way), and I will upgrade my mobo/CPU in a few months. I have been using AMD but plan to switch to Intel Core 2, as this seems to be the way to go.

First my confusion is on whether duo or quad is better (with gaming in mind), but I will ask that in the appropriate subforum.

My question here is - which mobo / chipset to use?

Specifically, I am trying to contrast p35, x38, x48, 680i and 780i.

Now, regarding the nVidia chipsets, I understand that I only need them if I want to go SLI. I do not. But are there any other advantages to them?

If not, what about the Intel chipsets? I noticed the x38 motherboards are very pricey. But they do support PCI-E 2.0. My 8800 GT will be 2.0 compliant. So how important is it for me to have the x38 chipset? In other words, have their been any benchmarks or tests done to compare how the same video card performs in a PCI-E 1.0 vs. PCI-E 2.0 setting? Otherwise the differences seem marginal to me.

Please share your thoughts and advice. Thanks!

If you don't need sli, Nvidia chipset have no benefits. 600s generation Nvidia chipset have compatibility problems with many models of ram. X38 is mostly for high overclocking, since they are capable of higher fsb. If you run your cpu at stock or only plan minor to moderate oc, a cheaper p35 will do the job. P35 starts at under $100, the cheapest x38 cost $207.

X38 is pcie2.0, p35 is not. But PCIE 2.0 is backward compatible, so your PCIE2.0 card will work on older boards. Graphic cards those days are not yet powerful enough to saturate the bus bandwidth, so PCIE2.0 will give you very little performance increase.

^agreed completely, P35 board is the best solution for you at the current time.

As for CPU, gaming with *most games at the moment is more reliant on CPU speed rather than number of cores. So you are probably better off with a dual higher clock than a quad lower clock... so possibly a e8400 might be the go. Although as time goes by more and more games will take advantage of the extra cores and we might see more of a change.