mobo advice

[jranney3393]

I'm trying to choose a motherboard for a new budget machine. I don't plan on overclocking or using RAID. What I am most concerned about is stability so I am leaning towards a board with the intel p35 chipset.

however, I am a little worried that I won't be able to upgrade my graphics in the future without the PCI-E 2.0 feature. unfortunately i've seen a plethora of bad reviews on boards using the newer p45 and p43 chipset.

my current but constantly changing build looks something like this:

2.4 GHz core 2 duo (E4600)
4 GB PC2 6400 RAM
512 MB Geforce 9800GT gfx card
650W Antec PSU
500 GB SATA hdd


my main questions are:

1) which chipset (or mobo) would you choose?
2) do you think PCI-E 2.0 matters or will matter in the next 3 years?
3) are there any specific brands that seem to put out more stable Mobos?

 

[Nils]

1) Can you give an idea of your budget?
2) The best gfx in three years will probably need that bandwidth to run at top speed, but might as well also require other ram and stuff like that. And that might require another mobo and so on... Evolution never stops. Let me put it this way: the most powerful gfx's today don't need pcie 2.0 so it isn't a must but if you can afford it, go for it.
3) Asus and Gigabyte are known for their very reliable motherboards.