Budget Core 2 MoBo?

[yumi_cheeseman]

well, I know that the Intel MB's are more expensive than the AMD MB's, but I am looking for the budget mobo, with everything I need.

I am not going to overclock.
I will most likely never have a RAID setup.
I will have 2 GB of DDR2 667Mhz memory (2 sticks, with possible upgrade to 4GB in the future)
will not need SLI ever.
must have SATA 2
and of course, must support core 2 duo.

as far as I know, Motherboards don't really increase/decrease performance of computers much if at all?

the 2 motherboards I have drawn out as capable are

ASUS P5LD2-SE
ASUS P5B

why ASUS? the budget Gigabyte board didn't quite have what I wanted, and I can get the P5B for almost the exact same price as the more expensive Gigabyte board, but it has a few cool bonuses on it.

will the ASUS P5LD2 - SE be what I want? and perform well?
or should I just go with teh P5B?

 

[Doughbuy]

How about the Asrock 775-VSTA, it is a true budget board (I would say P5B is more mainstream) and has some good features with decent performance. Of course, it uses a VIA chipset, but it can't be much worse than the 945 chipset the P5LD2 uses.

Otherwise, go with the P5B. The 965 chipset is much better.