Heyall. I'm looking to upgrade my system to something along the lines of a Q9450 and 8GB DDR2 RAM. I'm not particularily interested in overclocking - this system will play some games, but mostly do heavy computation, so stability is paramount. I need a decent mobo, but am undereducated on the issue. I am particularily worried that there will be trouble with putting 8 gigs of RAM in it.

So, I have my eye on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 (rev 2.x) iP35. Is it a good choice? If not, what in the same pricerange (~$100 on NewEgg) can you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

I just did a build using that board for my grandmother. It is a nice choice - no frills, but a good board.

I've not found any problems with boards supporting 8GB. Just use 4x2GB modules.

What else are you planning on doing with the new machine? Are you planning on doing video? If so, many devices still require an IEEE 1394 port (firewire/i-link), and I don't believe that board has any headers or back ports for that. You can solve that through a simple PCI slot IEEE 1394 ports, or just get the next model up by Gigabyte that includes a firewire port.

Good luck

No, I don't plan to do much video. My field is AI, so I plan to use the system for experimentation with that, particularily in combination with concurrency - too many algorithms are typically implemented as a single thread eventhough they could be massively threaded. My current system is too slow to do anything interesting without waiting for hours and hours to run through simulations.

I admit the 8 gigs is mostly for show, though. But RAM costs so little these days and I've always been a cheapskate when it comes to memory which has cost me much in the ways of performance, so I figure if I'm going to buy a quadcore I might as well buy enough memory to keep it supplied.

Thanks for your help. I'll probably order the system next week.

here's an advice
you want to get an iP35 based board ? look the pictures of several high quality boards. they all have cooling on specific spot.

if you want to overclock high and stable, and pay less, pick the board that has cooling components on the same spots... P5K is good... there's an OC... board from Gigabyte too. if you want firewire, you'll pay more for a pci card where you could just pick a higher ended board with firewire included. 8 gig is not a trouble... a manufacturer made ddr2 800 4x4gb kit claiming all p35 boards, x38, x48 WILL SUPPORT IT ( i bet you still need a bios update... lol ) check bios updates from manufacturers for resolved issues on the board...