DescentBB

I'm gonna get the Athlon 64 4400. My favorite music application was just updated to be optimized for dual core processors. The 4400 looks like a sweet spot - 1mb L2 cache, good price... although I might go for the 4200, because at $350 the 4400 is 33% more expensive but probably not 33% more performance.

I need a good motherboard with 4 PCI slots, 2 ATA, 2 SATA, 1 AGP, 1 PCI express, 3 DIMM slots. No fans on the motherboard -- e.g. north or southbridge fan. Must be a heatsink.

I'd like to save on costs, but I don't want to comprimise performance.

Is there any reason I should wait to upgrade (e.g. something new to come out soon, which will drive down prices)?

Any general reccomendations (e.g. one great for overclocking)?

Price: 75-125

then over clock it.

NewEgg.com's power search yielded these two 939 boards as having both AGP and PCI-E. I would avoid both like the plague. No idea if they suit your needs in other respects, or even whether they can run a dual core CPU. The ECS board has an old VIA southbridge which makes booting off SATA a terrible pain involving floppies, and only two PCI slots. The ASRock board has three.

Nothing major worth waiting for is coming soon, 'cept hopefully for more spending money, which would enable you to go all-out for PCI-E.

If you need it now, Asus or MSI, and nab yourself a 6800GS.

if you can wait, look after AM2 motherboards hit the market(and associated CPUs)

Do NOT get the asrock

If you didn't need the AGP slot it would make your life much easier.

I dont know Lob. I have an old ASRock running rock solid stable.

However I do keep a very close eye on the caps on it.

Oh and uh.....ignore the obvious pun.

Gigabyte GA-K8NF9 nForce 4 Ultra.
All passive cooling on motherboard.

I don't want to change my video card (it is AGP) so I think I'll just dump my need for PCI express and screw forwards compatibility for now (can't even think of something that needs it).

Now I'm going to go with the x2 3800 as for audio if overclocked it performs just as well as the top x2

I'm now intrigued by ASUS boards as it looks like they are easy to overclock.

Now my needs are 2 SATA, 2 IDE, 1AGP, 2 DIMM's as I am going for 1T 1gbx1gb which is showing better results for audio