Hey, new to boards here, thx for taking the time to help me out on this. I am building myself a new PC and could use some help deciding on the motherboard. I am an avid gamer, with prefrence to mmo's. I want to spend what i need to spend in hopes of supporting future interests without needing to redo my entire comp again. I'm looking for speed, graphics, and stability. Im not experienced with overclocking and dont want to melt my comp so I need stuff that is strong right out of the box. I am leaning towards an ati/crossfire supported board because of the things i have been reading about the new R600. I doubt i will use crossfire anytime soon b/c i intend to buy a $600 ish card (ouch, my wallet) that is dx10 rdy. (Pref R600) If duel cards become the mainstream in the games that i play, i would just like to have the option there. Im not ruling Nvidia out, just sounds like they are about to be upstaged and i dont want the inferior card.

So.... from what i have been reading, I'm thinking maybe the Abit Aw9d-max or the Asus P5W DH. Open to all suggestions. Have been doing circles on the net for a week now, trying to really decide on a solid choice. Remember I'm looking for speed, graphics, and stability out of the box. Thanks for your help.

Go with the asus p5w dh, you cant go wrong with it.

Don't forget the processor... THG just ran an article today about the effects / Importance of a fast Proc. I myself would hesitate to make decisions now about hardware that has yet to be released... without proper benches and side by side comparisons to base any real answer on it would be too soon I think to make that call. RD600 & R600 does sound promising though... but you have to wait that much longer... and a solid OC to a Quad core to about 3.3GHz combined with a 8800GTX and some Dominators looks damn tasty.

I think at some point dual cards will be necessary only to keep up with the latest much too expensive card you just can't get right now.... but it all moves too fast really. The AMD & ATI merger may just surprise us with a combined CGPU or whatever. 64 Unified Shaders is more flexible obviously. The 80nm processor alone on the R600 does give way for a lot more transistors... what was that number again?
But 65nm chips are not very far off I would Imagine... who will get there first. And even though you are not much of an overclocker... remember that in the past the ATI chipsets supplied BIOSs that were less than optimal.

As far as most trusted of Board Makers... ASUS holds that catagory... DFI is no distant second either and thier Board looks promising. But I can only speculate at best.