New motherboard question.
 

Hello all! It's time for a small, modest upgrade. My rig from 2004 is finally given up the ghost. Question is this, I am going to be going with an AMD X3 435 chip, and looking to pair it with a board. To keep it slightly future proof I want to do a 2 x PCI Express 16x slot motherboard, but have fallen behind in tech times a bit and don't know if it's worth paying more for a board that has 2x x16 slots, or if a x16 + x8 slot is sufficient for throwing in a matching video card in the future. Asus or Gigabyte are my preferred brands, having had to replace my current MSI board three times in the last 5 years has left me a bit...bitter.

Asus I was looking at..
Newegg.com - ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Thanks for any suggestions

Well, I have fallen behind the tech times myself. But if you pair that AMD X3 with the right motherboard there's a pretty good chance that you will be able to enable the fourth core, making your X3 an X4 for "free." I don't have time right now to do the research, I can later tonight. A lot of the X3's are really X4's. It's just about marketing. But I'm sure that some X4's have a problem with one core and are therefore labeled as X3's. So it could be hit and miss. AFAIK, both Asus and GB have motherboards that can enable the fourth core. You will have to fiddle with the BIOS, of course. If you are uncomfortable with doing that then just go for the best bang for the best price. I do agree with you, Asus and GB make the best boards. I miss Abit. Best of luck. Let me know if you have more questions.

Some recent manufacturers have given in to AMD and disabled the options that allow you the enable the 4th core in those x3 processors. Gigabyte still allows it in their most recent BIOS, but I don't know if Asus does. I have a gb board and am pretty happy with it

I would say no. Given your mobo and cpu choice I doubt you're going to drop cash on 2 x 3-400$ graphics cards that would be bottlenecked. :)

If you're sticking with Asus or Gigabyte and avoiding third-party chipsets (nvidia chipsets mostly) you're probably going to have difficulty going wrong.

The thing about multiple slots is that unless you plan to use multiple graphics cards at once odds are youll need PCIE-1x or plain PCI slots a lot more than you ever will multiple 16x slots. Running Sli/Crossfire is expensive and difficult and as far as I know the vast majority of non-graphics expansion cards are still using PCI and a few are now expanding to PCIE-1x. Even my X-Fi soundcard is still old fashioned PCI.

You really don't have much to worry about.

Hi,

I just finished rebuilding my rid with the M4A78T-E using the AMD Phenom II X4 955 chipset. This involved a change to DDR3 memory, A bigger power supply(600 watts), and the switch to Pioneer's BDR-205 Blu Ray Burner. It took over a month of effort for me. It was my first build and I went step by step.

I am using the PCLinOS Linux operating system. I have examined many Linux Distro's and I like this one for the stable work computer. It is a 32 bit OS however, and that is fine for me at the moment.

I am happy to answer any specific questions you or others may have.

John