Am I dumb!? Max Extreme or P5E3 Deluxe

[dlkj]

New guy here....been researching motherboards and so far I have narrowed it down to the maximus extreme or the p5E3 Deluxe. It sucks there are sooo many boards out there....are these board pretty equal or is one better than the other at specific things? I kinda like the idea of water just in case i need it. On the Asus website it says these boards have a 1600/1333/1066/800 fsb. Is it a true 1600 or 1333 with the option to OC to 1600...it doesn't say anywhere. I thought the big deal with the x48 coming out is that it was 1600 fbs.

I might have more money than brains but I really don't mind paying more for a board. I keep reading that it's dumb right now to get DDR3 Ram, PCIE 2.0, and I'll the other goodies that come on these new boards, BUT WHY. I know this technology moves fast, but I want to get the biggest lead I can right now. I'm ready to buy now, so I want the best I can get even though something new is probably coming out in months, unless that something new is so spectacular I should wait.

thanks for any help and go easy on me....just don't want to F-up...I only do this every couple years and usually I just close my eyes and pick any ol board...

oh yeah, and if it matters I'm getting the Q6600 cpu

 

[hawkspur]

I've got a Maximus Extreme and I like it. Although I wouldn't recommend it unless you are going to be doing some heavy overclocking. Also, it doesn't fall into standard ATX specs, being an inch longer lengthwise than most boards you have to get a case that supports E-ATX.

 

[Guest]

There is also the Rampage coming out if not already.
I was looking at the Maximus Formula (I'm happy to stick to DDR2) and then saw this review of the Rampage which is X48 and still DDR2.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3208

 

[jasonsupreme]

I have the P5E3 Deluxe board right now and I can tell you that I've tried every setting for ddr3-1600 and ddr3-1800 including all the northbridge straps and can't get it to be stable even while using the lastest bios. Alot of people are having trouble trying to get this board to be stable at fsb 400+ and the weird thing is after booting into windows it doesn't crash straight away it usually crashes like 30mins later under heat load or idle, I know it's nothing to do with any of my hardware because when the settings are below fsb 400 the system is stable. To be honest this board is really a 1333mhz board and maybe with certain memory brands you can acheive higher overclocks other than that everything else is stable and I haven't had any other problems plus being an X board you can expect that as they are the best chipsets out there.
My advise to you is to go for an x48 chipset 1600 stock speed rather than the P5E3 Deluxe 1600 overclock because when ever they say overclock it always varies on what hardware and cooling system your using to acheive it.

Jasonsupreme