Which Motherboard to Buy?

Hi, everyone. I am looking to buy a new motherboard and I just really do not know where to start, I am looking to spend around £100 and need a LGA775 Socket, a couple of PCI a PCI-E and DDR2 memory. Any suggestions would eb really appreciated! Thanks.

+1^. If I were building new these days, I'd also choose a P45. A P43 might not have enough ports, but might be a good lower cost choice if it does.

That's brilliant that's what i thought looking through websites. A lot of people have recommended me an ASUS which seems quite good to me. I'm looking at a P5Q PRO. Are there any inherent problems with that board such as a recently released better one?

Crossfire is ATI's equivalent to SLI, a way to combine the power of 2 video cards. If you don't know what it is, then you probably don't need it.

Most of the P45 boards that supports it, cap the speed at x8 and not full x16 which can result in performance loss of 10-25% (compared to full x16).

Ideally you'd have some DDR2-800. What you've got there sounds like DDR2-533. It might work, but slower. What kind of RAM is it, do you have a model number?

The P5Q Pro does not have SLI. (Only a bunch of motherboards support SLI and you're better off avoiding them because they're junk.) It does have Crossfire, but as Zenthar said it's running it at half-speed and loses some performance.

Here are two really nice choices:

1. GA-X48-DS4 £175 + Sapphire HD 4870 1GB £246 + add a second card for, say, £150..£200 next year when it's cheaper
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145368
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151334
Cost now: £421
Total cost: around £600
Performance: about 60..70% of max until you add the second card; 100% after

2. P5Q Pro £95 + a single HD 4870 X2 £378
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148278
Cost now: £473
Total cost: £473 - no more card to buy later
Performance: 100% right away

You get the idea. The second approach makes more sense, unless your budget for now is very small and you expect ATI to drop prices a lot in the coming months.

No idea about that RAM, sorry. It might work, but no guarantees.

Yes if you want two video cards on the P5Q Pro and both working on the same monitor then they have to be ATI. The P5Q Pro supports Crossfire (i.e two ATI cards) but not SLI (i.e. two nVidia cards). Even worse, they have to be very similar cards. For example two HD 4850 cards would work fine in Crossfire, but a HD 4850 and a HD 3450 wouldn't. A HD 4850 and a HD 4870 would allow Crossfire, but it's a waste because the HD 4870 would be dumbed down.