Need Advice for a New Motherboard..(proposed setup below)

[MasterPJ]

Good Morning/Evening,

I'm looking for some advice on what motherboard to buy to get the best performance out of a new proposed system with:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Socket 775 2.13GHz (Bus Speed 1066 MHz)
Graphics Card: ATI X1950 Pro (PCI-E 16x - Crossfire ready - 512MB)
Hard Disk: SATA300 500GB

Ive looked at the Asus Commando and Ive got to say that looks impressive, but before I go and spend about £130 on a motherboard I just want to know it could be the best motherboard I could get.

I want it obviously to be able to handle the above components, but I want it to be crossfire ready, with at least 2 PCI-E slots - Ive seen the first is normally a 16x and the second a 4x slot. I also want 2 spare PCI slots. Price range to me doesn't really matter, but to me performance is what matters as I plan to run evil 6 week tasks as well as normal day to day tasks. Yes....I'm a computer science student with crazy AI ideas....but trying to find a motherboard today wasn't as easy as what it used to be....

Oh and preferably an ATX form factor.

Any recommondations?

Thank you in advance.
Peter

[gilgamesh]

Good Morning/Evening,

I'm looking for some advice on what motherboard to buy to get the best performance out of a new proposed system with:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Socket 775 2.13GHz (Bus Speed 1066 MHz)
Graphics Card: ATI X1950 Pro (PCI-E 16x - Crossfire ready - 512MB)
Hard Disk: SATA300 500GB

Ive looked at the Asus Commando and Ive got to say that looks impressive, but before I go and spend about £130 on a motherboard I just want to know it could be the best motherboard I could get.

I want it obviously to be able to handle the above components, but I want it to be crossfire ready, with at least 2 PCI-E slots - Ive seen the first is normally a 16x and the second a 4x slot. I also want 2 spare PCI slots. Price range to me doesn't really matter, but to me performance is what matters as I plan to run evil 6 week tasks as well as normal day to day tasks. Yes....I'm a computer science student with crazy AI ideas....but trying to find a motherboard today wasn't as easy as what it used to be....

Oh and preferably an ATX form factor.

Any recommondations?

Thank you in advance.
Peter

Athe moment the best for ocing seems to be either the old AB9 pro and the AB9 Quad gt i965 chipset)

For the 975 it seems to be the AW9D max, all are crossfire compatible. The AW9D max has only one regular PCI socket which is really its only downfall in my opinion, otherwise it is stable and a v-good overclocker.

Coming soon will be the bearlake chipset (intels updated 975 and yes abit will do their own version). So it may be better to hold off for a while if your keen on missfire... sorry i mean crossfire

gilgamesh

[BUFF]

first bearlake will be P35 which is 965 replacement/update & then X38 which is the 975X replacement