Upgrade Recommendations

So, I'm in a quandary at the moment, I can't really upgrade my SLI Gaming rig as it has the older nForce chipset that only supports around 3GB of memory.

So I'm looking at recycling some of my parts and get another MB/CPU combo and reuse the case, graphics cards and such.

I will most likely have to upgrade my memory as I can't find any updated Socket 939 motherboards any longer

So I'm thinking either another AMD CPU based nForce motherboard or an Intel CPU based model.

You can get some pretty cheap models but most seem to be based around the nForce 5xx or 6xx series chipsets.

Many of the nForce 7xx series are more expensive then I really want to pay however, some of them like the ASUS models offer their new dedicated Sound Card rather then using the onboard audio codec.

Of course I would want to add the new Creative Labs X-Fi Sound Card and upgrade my older 7800 GTX cards when I can.

I also want to future proof as much as possible without having to go with the nForce 790 chipset which requires DDR3 memory modules.

Any suggestions would be welcome, thanks

I know they are kind of expensive but one or two of the new high end ASUS boards have the discrete card with X-Fi tech (I think they only do up to EAX 4.0 but that is much better than any onboard that I know of). Sort of saves you a slot too since they are made for the uppermost PCI-E x1 slot. I am not sure if any other PCI-E cards work in that slot. It appears to be a regular slot that is black (most of the others are white) but is seems to have the right spacing to be a normal x1 slot. I personally have always been an AMD fan and some of the xx50 series Phenoms look pretty promising (especially the Black Series) but AMD is still seriously playing catch-up with the Intel Core 2 architecture (I, even though an AMD fan, have a QX6700 and a B3 Q6600 that are plenty powerful). The Asus Maximus II Formula is a good board but is an Intel P45 chipset. Uses DDR2 but doesn't support SLI, it does CrossFireX. Lots of great features on this board (has the X-FI add-on card I was talking about). The new 4870 X2 cards coming out look pretty promising. I will probably use a combination of this board and a 4870 for my HTPC in the near future. Hope that points you in the right direction.

Thanks for the info, I was looking at both ATi and nVidia for the GPU and then possibly even the MB Chipset.

I settled on getting a piece meal configuration and the clincher was that Fry's now sells the BFG 9800GTX card for $199.99 with a $50.00 mail in rebate.

So it looks like either an nVidia 750 or 780 chipset board for me