Best Mobo, researching for my next system

I have been conducting research for my next system, mainly gaming, and hopefully have 2-3 years of future-proofing. Anyway this is the best I have come across yet;

GIGABYTE GA-8N-SLI Quad Royal
"......the world first SLI technology enabled motherboard equipped with four PCI Express X16...'

" 1. LGA775 Intel® Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 processor FSB1066 with HT technology
2. Supports 4 DIMMs Dual Channel DDR2 667 memory (8meg)
3. Enables NVIDIA SLI™ technology at two full-bandwidth PCI-E X16 interface
4. Features four PCI-E X16 slots for ultimate gaming platform
5. Dual Gigabit Ethernet connection with NV firewall
6. Features SATA 3Gb/s and IEEE1394 interfaces
7. Integrated high quality 8 channel Audio Codec
8. Free Bluetooth USB dongle bundle "

(sourced 2006:
http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/M...oductID=1957&ProductName=GA-8N-SLI+Quad+Royal)

Found it for $375 so far.

Anyone recommend others and if so why? how much?

 

Also what would be the best ram for this??

 

Well, if money is NO problem, then sure, however, imho the only things this mobo has going for it above the other SLI X 16 ones is the 2 extra PCI-E slots for cards... which will be great, for playing games on 8 (!?) monitors! Also, no matter how many PCI-E slots you have, only TWO can be used at this time in SLI configuration ie. the new quad sli systems are only using TWO of the PCI-E slots, each video card actually has 2 GPU'S thus making the quad. IMHO the money you could save would be better spent elsewhere, this board seems to me to be more gimmiky than anything... although, if your running an army command center with 8 big screens it would be perfect... you get the idea... just my 2cp, take it with a grain of salt if you will

 

sounds like a cool set up but, do you care more for a intel or amd type of system. because if you dont, i would go with amd. you would get more for your money. the processors and the mobos are a lot cheaper and in my opinion, they run faster too. i've built two amd systems so far and never had a problem. the first one was with a amd 2500 processor and the one i have now is a amd 64bit 3200 it is just as fast as a p4 3.2 and almost half the price. im not trying to convert you or anything but thats just my opinion so go with what ever works for you.

my set up

abit ax8 with amd athlon 64bit 3200
160 maxtar hd
1 g of ram -cheap but running in dual
gforce 6600 256mb video card

runs great never had a problem just wish that i could aford better ram.

 

Cheers any alternatives worth looking at? The thing that also grabbed my attention is the RAM (upto 8Gb@667). Now it may seem to be riduculous but!

 

Still a fence sitter on that and still sifting through the facts, quad pumping, HTT, dual core, dual processing, etc, etc. Have only had Intel so far but AMD certainly looks interesting.