I must emphatically disagree and I think Tom would too!
The chipset is the most important part of any PC. The chipset determines every feature that your PC can have!
I am an AMD fan, and thefore the chipset to have in an AMD system today is the 890FX. It incorporates an new IOMMU.
This now allows the chipset grant access to add-in cards mapped areas of main system memory. Before the 890FX, ever since AMD moved the MMU (Memory Management Unit) out of the Northbridge and onto the CPU Die, only the CPU had access to memory.
This Toms article about the 890GX
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-890gx-radeon,2571.html
The G means it supports graphics on the motherboard. Otherwise it is the same as FX.
The 800 series chipset from AMD took the PCI-Express channels from 24 to 42. Back at the end of February of 2010. Leaving Intel out of breath at 24 lanes for more than a year, until the Sandy bridge release, 2 lanes less just a few weeks ago... AND with big problems.
Every bit of data goes through the North bridge. So I think the chip set is very important.