Need Help Selecting a Mobo

Was also concerned about this

"If you plan to OC an 860 heavily, don't buy a motherboard with a Foxconn socket."

How can I be sure that the board Im looking at doesn't have a foxconn socket? is it displayed somewhere?

if you're looking for a future proof gaming motherboard, Get an intel with your motherboard socket that has two PCI 2.0+ 16 slots. So that in the future you can stick another graphics card in there.

Here's a good example on the AMD side of the world.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Well first thing is that the Intel® Core™ i7-860 uses socket 1156; while the Z77 chipset based board uses socket 1155 so they are not compatible.

Now as far as your question on PCI-e and 16x or 8x lanes. On the older H67/P67 or Z68 chipset if you try to add a second card in additional PCI-E 16x slot the slots would scale down to give you two slots at x8/x8. Even at that the most you weren't losing much in the performance with an SLI or Xfire configuration. It is important to note that the Z77 chipset does the samething but since the board uses PCI-E 3.0 cutting the bandwidth in half you are still getting the bandwidth that you would have from a full PCI-E 2.0 16x.

I personally have never heard anything about a Foxconn socket issue.

As far a board based on your budget you can look at the ASRock Z77 Extreme4, the Asus P8Z77-V or the Asus P8Z77-V Pro.

ASRock Z77 Extreme4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

do you plan on using video cards

Is there any reason why a x79 would be a better/worse choice than a z77?