The chipset, and northbridge inparticular, totally effects the performance of a mobo and the computer as a whole.
On an Intel system, the northbridge controlls the fronts side bus speed and memory badnwidth. Newer chipsets/northbridges enable faster fsb and memory. Three years ago, the "best" Intel chipset was the the 875P which allowed for a fsb up to 800MHz and dual channel DDR memory. And now, the "best" Intel chipset is the X48 which allows for a fsb of up to 1600MHz and dual channel DDR3 memory. The southerbridge primarily controls the I/O of the mobo and it wasn't up until about the 86x series that SATA was even supported.
So, the chipset and northbridge are key to what level of performance you want from your computer. If you notice the X48 is labeled as an "enthusiast" chipset whereas the P45 is labeled as mid-level. Those labels are for a reason and indicative of their support and performance; for example, the P45 only supports Crossfire of two lanes of 8x PCIe whereas the X48 does a full two lanes of 16x PCIe.