Mobo wars and failure

I am currently researching a first time desktop system build with high end graphics as the main system function. I am looking at mobo selections, and also between the cost advantage of the Phenom II 1100t CPU verses the I7 980X Extreme; I am light on understanding which one is the better choice for longevity. We all know the cost answer is AMD Phenom. However when I start looking at mobo's for these at the cutting edge ATX level there are a lot of either misunderstood set up boot issues that people dont understand yet. Or there are bugaboo's; that are needing to be debugged over time, for these top end boards to work great with either of these high end CPU's. Would I be better off going with tried and true boards that are two years into debugging. Or are the new boards that have 2 or 4 PCI Express16x slots that can knock out SLI the way to boldly go? I would be good for a time with the graphics capabilities of the newest boards. I have been blogging, forum reading and interneting and will continue to do so. But if anyone really has the feel of the newest of the new; and how close you can get to new without having no boot/& failure issues I would appreciate it greatly.
The test mark numbers are so strong on the newest ATX boards, 67, Crosshair IV Formula, P67A-UD7, 890FXA-GD70, X58UD9, X58 Extreme ETC, but forums show alot of boot issues and the need to RMA alot. Any wise help out here?

Building today the Sandy Bridge either I5 2500K or I7 2600K on a P67 board should be given serious consideration. The only thing that is beating them performance wise is LGA1366 build with a $1000 I7 980X CPU.

ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA and MSI are the top manufacturers of motherboards (apart from server market) The I7 2600K is the fastest AFFORDABLE desktop CPU to date. For longevity Intel's performance wins over AMD's budget advantages.

Most if not all boards today are RoHS compliant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restr [...] _Directive
I have never seen anything that compares material used by different manufacturers apart from product reviews and comparisons.