Advice on future upgrades

[lardacus]

Hello, thanks for taking the time to read this. I just have a few questions about my current build and am looking for some advice on the few items I plan on picking up in the near future.

I currently have:
AMD Phenom II x4 945 3.0 ghz quadcore
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
8 gigs (4x2) G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 ram
120 gb G. SKILL Phoenix Pro SSD for Windows 7/WoW, league of legends etc
Palit NE5X460HF1102 GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Sonic Platinum Overclocking Edition 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
1 TB Samsung spinpoint F3 for media


I plan on moving to Intel due to the lack of TRIM supported AMD AHCI drivers which greatly hinders my SSD's performance by having to use MSAHCI drivers.

I am really leaning towards a core i5 760
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115067&cm_re=i5_760-_-19-115-067-_-Product

Q1: What motherboard do you recommend for this single GPU setup? I was pointed towards the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 previously and it seems to have everything I'm looking for. I know others speak very highly of ASUS/MSI so I'm just looking for educated opinions.

Q2: Will my current ram support triple channel? I know I'd be losing my current 8 (4x2) and having to use 6 (3x2) to achieve triple channel.
2a: Can I just use the 8 and leave it in dual channel?
2b: What kind of performance hit am I looking at by not utilizing triple channel?

I know some people are just going to say wait for Sandy Bridge, which is an option, but I am more comfortable going to an older platform that is already known for stability rather than getting balls deep into something that hasn't really been tested yet.

 

[kureme]

The i5-760 is a great buy and is LGA 1156, not LGA 1366 like you assumed. LGA1366 is reserved only for the i7 9xx series.

A1) The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 is perfectly fine for a single card build. If you want the option of adding in a second card, the Asus P7P55D-E Pro is another good mobo.

A2) It should support triple channel but the LGA 1156 only supports dual channel. You would need to get an i7 9xx on the LGA 1366 board for triple channel.

A2a) Yes this is possible and recommended, but maybe you can use 4gb and leave 4gb for your "old" AMD system and maybe sell it. 4gb is plenty.

A2b) The performance hit is unnoticable and insignificant. You won't even notice a difference.

 

[lardacus]

Thanks for the information, I was not aware that tri channel was 1366 only. Seeing as how I want to stay 1156 that is good news to me because I didn't really want to replace my RAM and me likey my 8 gigs.

I don't think I would ever consider SLI/Crossfire so a single GPU setup is perfectly fine.