Chipset question

umm hi im kindof a noob and im trying to pick chips for my first pc and i dont know
a.what a chipset exactly is (plz dont lmgtfy me ive been there)
b.if you have to use the recommended chipset for your motherboard.
Im looking at GA-MA770T-UD3P for the motherboard from GIGABYTE one EVGA GeForce GTX 260 and one EVGA GeForce 9500 GT Video Card for the video cards, and AMD Phenom II X4 quad core 965 for the processor

Evongugg has drawn Wiki faster than I did... But for Gpu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compa [...] sing_units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compa [...] sing_units
the two cards you mention have quite different capabilities.

Some basic choices about Cpu+chipset (as both are linked):
- 4 cores only if your applications use them: recent games, video editing, heavy image editing. If not, 2 cores save noise, room heat, electricity, purchase cost, and are as fast on single-task applications, which means all others. Or 1 core, but modern Cpu have 2. Remember that Xp Home uses only 1 core, Xp Pro 2 cores; Vista and later limit the sockets instead.
- If you want 4 cores, a direct Cpu-Ram connection is better than a Fsb.
- Will you use a 64 bits OS? Necessary to address >3GB Ram, now or in the future, but a bit slower.
- Beware many chipsets, especially Intel, limit the maximum Ram to low amounts like 8GB. This will look tiny in few years.
- Do you want Pci-E, Sata, Raid, Ddr2, Ddr3...? (Probably yes to all, from your suggestions)
- Do you want to run old software, or an old (W2k and before) OS?

Some choices about the Gpu:
- Will you use a dX10 OS?
- How much noise, heat, electricity bill do you accept? What games shall run?
(I kept my 9600gso for 2 weeks: too big, replaced by a passive 8600gt)
- Shall it be used for non-gaming purposes, like video editing on special software?