I'm upgrading my entire system, and got most of it all picked out except for motherboard......It would be nice to find a mobo that had little issues as possible, but so far i've read alot of issues with the newer p35 boards out there.

I had planed on getting a DUO 2 CORE cpu, runing G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800.

It would be nice if I was somehow able to keep the use of my 3 old ide hard drives and still use the newer board.

SLI is not important to me at all...from what I've seen unless your runing a top end vid cards your realy not gaining much IMO.

My friend says get a P35 mobo, but theres so much out there....any suggestions?

Also, please nothing over say like 200.....some of the board prices out there are realy outrageously crazy exp.

ASUS P5K , ASUS P5K-E , GIGABYTE P35 DS3R , thats if u want to have a board that supports only DDR2 both OCs very nicely

ASUS P5KC , GIGABYTE P35C DS3R , thats if u want a board that supports both DDR2 and DDR3 (although DDR3 is limited to 4GB) ,these board dont OC well as the first 3

I've noticed that alot of SLI boards are made well enough, like this one.
I know I said I was looking at the lower range of 200 max, but hell if its gonna be a semi good system, 250 is ok I guess...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130081
MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

I think this board is not a P35 or is it? How bad of a step back is it if its not a P35 based board?

is this a good enough board or is there issues with this one? I like this one because of the 2 ide ports....besides the passive built in heatsinks for the south and north chipsets. I've also read an artical that stated the new bios has fixed most major issues with this board.

Again your comments much appreciated, as its been a long time since I upgraded my old comp...this is a major overhaul of my entire system..frankly almost a completely new build...man has it got expensive to build a decent gaming rig....grrr...

One more question....I see that most of the newer boards only support ATA 100...if my hard drives are ATA 133 what does this mean? Will they be recognized? Will they run way slower? What? A friend suggested getting a pci card to run my hard drives, is this a viable solution? IF yes, what do you suggest?

The newer mobos may only have one PATA (IDE) connector. If you have three IDE hard drives (and possibly an IDE optical drive), you'll only be able to attach two of them unless you get a PCI card. Another alternative is to get an external USB enclosure for one or more of them. If you get a big enough SATA drive, you could attach your IDE drives one at a time in an external case to copy the data you need to your new drive, then leave the biggest one connected as a backup drive.

abit IP35 Pro is a very good mobo & can be had as low as $162 I believe.
Gigabyte P35-DS3P is another good board roughly around the same price - slightly cheaper but in some ways not as highly featured.

IDE/PATA is on it's last legs - iirc WD or 1 of the others has already said that they will stop making them before Xmas.
Opticals are going the same way.

No, the 650i in the name means it's based on the 650i chipset, not P35

I've got a GA-P35C-DS3R, very happy with it. It only supports two IDE devices. I'm not even taking advantage of that. Too much trouble with those large IDE cables blocking airflow. With 500 GB SATA drives at $100 I decided not to bother reusing my old 250GB IDE drive.

The ATA133 disks should work with ATA100. Slower, but not "way slower". You're better off with new SATA disks either way.

=== "the new bios has fixed most major issues with this board." === as in, it still has some major issues not fixed yet, but you're interested anyway?

Well the only issuesas the article said, just some minor anoyances of finagling some oc'ing with the memory that can be done with a bit of paitence.

Well, I could live with that.

Still, P35 is a better choice. It's guaranteed to allow upgrading to Penryn CPUs (i.e. the new 45 nm versions to be released in 2008).
Also, I'd rather trust Gigabyte or Abit than MSI. Nothing personal, just based on reviews I've read recently, it looks like MSI is less reliable.

Yeah, moving to new drives can be painful. I copied 320 GB to an external hard drive, then tried to copy it over to the new PC. Guess what, the external hard drive died after about doing 10% of the job
It was brand new too...

If you like the GA-P35C-DS3R also look at GA-P35-DS3R (lose DDR3 support, save $30) or GA-P35-DS3P (get Firewire support, pay a bit more for it).

Ok this is the setup I'm going with.....most parts have been bought already....as my bday is coming up, I made a list and got friends and family to pick from the list instead of getting me crap I dont need or want...ahem.

CPU
$125.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115014

CPU COOLER:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835118223

or this one

maybe the thermalake max orb?

CPU THERMAL COMPOUND:
$15.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835100008

MEMORY:
$149.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231065

VIDEO CARD:
$199.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131055

CASE:
$109.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129155

THIS CASE IS TEMP TILL I CAN AFFORD THIS CHOICE OF CASE/PSU:
CASE:
$129.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] ntec%2b900

CASE POWER SUPPLY:
$129.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817151029

Will the cpu cooler fit on most of the boards you guys recommended, or will I have issues? I've read a few boards have issues with spacing and the north and south bridge built in coolers....

Again thanks for all the information.....

This x1950xt http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814241063 is a better video card for $10 less.

I'm not very impressed with Zalman coolers. The ones that do best for cooling and noise in most reviews are Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Tuniq Tower or Scythe Ninja. They're all big though and may not fit in the Sonata. Check this one out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835887002
ZEROtherm BTF90 92mm $35

Why spend $150 on RAM when you can spend $67:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820220144

Maybe with the cheaper RAM and cooler you can now spend $300 on the video card and get an 8800 GTS 320 MB.

I actually spent $59.99 after rebate last week on some OCZ Platinum CL4s, 2GB.

Shop around. Newegg is fantastic but they aren't the only game in town. I just built a new rig last week and bought RAM, PSU, and Case from ZipZoomFly since they had the best prices after free shipping.

The Mobo, and optical drives came from Newegg because even with shipping, they were cheaper than ZZF.

unless you already have the Sonata II I can't really see the point in buying a $110 case+PSU as a temporary measure until you can buy a $110 case (after rebate) & a good PSU esp. when the Smart Power 2 450W is known to have a very high failure rate ...

if you don't need RAID, firewire etc. & a basic mobo would do then you can get something like an abit IP35-E as low as $70.
As far as keeping your 3 IDE drives then 650i mobos are certainly 1 option - imo the GA-N650SLI-DS4 is the best of them.

Ok how about this..if you all had $800 to get the following, what would you pick? I'm been concentrating on intel, as my friend its the best...he has a duo core amd and is not happy with its preformance. THERE IS NO NEED TO BE COMPATABLE WITH THE IDE DRIVES OF MINE....I'VE ALREADY ADMITED DEFEAT AND KNOW I'LL JUST HAVE TO GET SATA AND TRANSFER THE DATA OVER TO ANOTHER SATA DRIVE LATTER ON...

LIST:

CPU
CPU COOLER
THERMAL COMPOUND
MOBO
MEMORY 2 GIGS
VID CARD
SATA HARD DRIVE
CASE AND PSU

THATS IT....SO WHAT YA THINK?
I'M HALFWAY TEMPTED TO TOSS ALL MY CASH INTO THE PARTS AND LEAVE THE CASE OUT OF IT, AND JUST GET THE PSU, AND RUN MY SYSTEM THE WAY I DID TO A FRIENDS WHEN HE HAD NO CASH FOR THE CASE HE WANTED...WE JUST BUILT A WOODEN CASE TILL HE COULD AFFORD THE ONE HE WANTED...LOL...IT WAS MORE LIKE SEVERAL TEIRED SHELFS....

ALSO THIS IS NOT YELLING...IM TIRED, JUST GOT OFF OF WORK, AND MY EYES HURT...

LATTERS