Need Help choosing MOBO

[WJC]

Guys, this is my first post and I need some help choosing a new replacement MOBO.

My current system:
MOBO - gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9
XFX 7800GT
1Gig 2*512 Corsair XMS Pro
AMD64 3500 +
HDD 160 & 120 Seagate SATA
Samsung 16x DVDRW TS-H552U

My current mobo was a replacement for my socket A board that died and moving away from AGP made me decide on this mobo. It has integrated graphics and is only 3 months old; I just received my 7800 GT.

My question is this. Would it be worth it getting a better MOBO than this without any overclocking in mind, would there be a big enough performance gain to justify this?

My second question obviously, with overclocking in mind what could I gain?

I have read some reviews and this board is apparently not good overclocker.

I doubt it if I will ever run SLI or crossfire and would prefer to stick to the NVDIA chipsets, but any suggestions is welcome.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[WJC]

If I wait for AM2 wouldn’t I then also need to replace both my CPU and Memory?

Thanks for the response, which one of those boards would you recommend, the Asus, Abit or DFI

 

[WJC]

Thanks once again, how much of a gain could I expect if I go for the DFI or Asus?

 

[mdd1963]

If your current mainboard already has a PCI-e slot, I'd enter the BIOS, disable the onboard video, and slap the 7800 in....then enjoy!

(In gaming at decent resolutions, the video card is nearly always the bottleneck anyway, and a 3500+ does just fine in all games...even when I did OC mine to 2.5G, there was no real noticeable boost in average framerates)

 

[WJC]

That is exactly what I did, my question still stands, would it be worth it changing the MOBO only at this stage?

What is the difference in performance between the NVIDIA MC51 and Nforce 4 Ultra chipset without OC’ing, because my current mobo is not OC’ing friendly.

 

[p8ntslinger676]

I have an Abit AN8-SLi and it is great, it offers so many overclocking abilities and works like a charm. I am about to build a computer for one of my friends and i am going to get him the exact same kind i hae cus they are soo good, you can overclock like a mofo even on stock cooling. 8) Overclocking Face (straining for the most) :x

 

[WJC]

Guys,

Thanks for the help so far but I still don’t have a clear answer. How much of a performance gain could I expect by changing my MOBO? Will it be worth the effort?

As for AM2, what I understood there will not be a increase in performance from 939 to AM2.