^ budget figure would be a plus, also you were stating that you may not get an ASUS board because you can't find one that meets your requirements. What are your requirements? If we knew, we'd be better suited to help
Hard to say exactly but mainly my key focus for this build is to try and get something that's stable, moderately future-proof, easy to work with and update, and the least amount of gibberish. AM3 will probably last a little while so I'll lean towards that, but I want to make sure the board has a chipset that will perform and be moderately future-proof, too. NVIDIA will likely come out with their new DX11 cards in January '10...I don't know what that will mean for the mobo but mobos are cheap.
It's not so much specifics that I'm looking for, but if I have one board from MSI and another from ASUS, and they match up but the MSI has some extra features or a better layout, I'll probably end up going MSI (or whatever). The ASUS venture was just because I hadn't bought anything from them before.
Would there be a reason not to go with the NVIDIA 980a chipset? I'm assuming that's NVIDIA's latest chipset, so if I end up sticking to the plan and getting one of the GTX cards, that's the best option I can see.
I'm an AMD guy myself, but if your looking for the end all be all in CPU's right now, then you definitely want the i7.
I don't necessarily need the absolute best CPU out there, and if that is currently an Intel with an AMD in second, I'll still go with the AMD. To that end, I just want the best I can get so that I'll be good for a bit. If the difference between the very top AMD chip and the next one down is just a very slim margin, I'm not gonna fork out the extra bucks for the top chip (unless the price difference isn't significant).
I have been looking at AMD mobo's for a little while now and the M4A79T Deluxe AM3, would probably be a good choice for future-proof AMD mobo.
Aside from the M4A79T being a Crossfire board and the M4N82 being an SLi board, is there a difference? Looks like a nice board.
I know the ATI sounds tempting, and the cheaper price of the cards could lead to a crossfire setup sooner than an SLI setup. I would like to try the PhysX stuff, though, and since I already have an 8800GTS it would be free to try it (as opposed to having to buy a second card for it). Also, I'm guessing ATI cards won't do 3D? That's not a key feature for me, but it sounds fun and would be good to have it as a possibility.
For AMD CPU I would chose the phenom II x4 955 Black Edition because you would save a couple bucks and even if your not "into" overclocking, with the M4A79T you would probably be able to OC the 955 to 965 speeds on stock cooling.
Yeah, with AM3 the 955 BE sounds good. I'm not into paying $60+ extra for 0.2GHz. I don't usually do overclocking, but that's certainly within the easy realm. Plus I intend to go with a liquid cooling setup, so I doubt there will be trouble with heat.
Thanks for the help, all, I really do appreciate it. Hope I'm not being too difficult! lol
Le'me digest this.