Help choosing a new motherboard

I am about to upgrade to a new core 2 duo and need to find a motherboard that will support it. I have found one or to i like but i wanted to see what motherboards people recommended. It needs to have 2 PCI- E x16 slots, a LGA 775 CPU socket with 1333FSB or over and at least 2 DDR2 ram banks. If you know of a really good/reliable motherboard with these or better specs please let me know. I was looking to spend around 100-200 dollars. Thanks in advance

P.s i will be using the computer for gaming, if you need any additional information let me know.

thanks so much for all of that, i am hoping to get a ati 4890 or the nividia equivalent i don't mind either ddr2 or ddr3 thanks again

The above mentioned board will run Crossfire but not at full speeds.. However, with a 4890, I don't think you're going to need to crossfire.. that board should suit you fine..

If you are looking to add another graphics card in the future, maybe you should get a board with a x48 northbridge instead.. however, you wanted a lga775 board so i'm guessing it's not gonna be doing anything crazy..

if you want max performance, you should go i7 with x58 nb.. that way you wont have to worry about which video cards to get or if they can run sli/crossfire or not..

Why do you think you need two pci-e slots?
Why do you think you want them to be both X16?

For a single 4890, you only need one pci-e slot.
Same for a single GTX275 which has similar performance.
Either will give you outstanding performance at 1920 x 1200. Only if you will be gaming at 2560 x 1600 might dual cards be appropriate.

If you plan on dual 4890 in crossfire, two X8 slots will be sufficient. X16 slots will make a marginal difference in FPS with dual 4890 cards, perhaps 1-2%.


If this is a new build, wait for a few days to see what the P55 and i5 announcements bring.

I agree with alikum, why get last generation hardware as an upgrade? Doesn't make sense to me.
I would wait one week, as the new tech coming out will also have the effect of driving down prices on current hardware. I think you'd be kicking yourself 6 months down the road. Or maybe even two weeks.

Sorry just saw that you said it was the i5 my bad lol is the i5 cheaper than the i7's?

I was wondering what would be better a core 2 duo 3.16GHZ or a core i7 2.8GHZ? i know the answer is probably really obvious but i just want to make sure.