Upgrading to a Quad-Core, mobo suggestions please

My old P4 2.4GHz has served me well and I still think it's a decent processor, but it's time for an upgrade and I've waited patiently.

I've been picking up compenets over a period of time and just picked up my cpu today. Here's what I've got so far (but I need to double check some specifics on the items).

AMD 9950be 2.6GHz
RAM OCZ DDR2 6400 (800mhz)
Primary HDD Raptor 10k rpm 80g
Secondary HDD Barracuda 7.2k rpm 320g
500w PSU
Video card (I need to check) PCI-E with 512k
Sound card Sound Blaster Xtreme Music card (SB0460)

so, now I'm looking for mobos. Any suggestions?

The ASUS M3A78 Pro was suggested. Any feedback / opinions?

I've read that a simple / safe overclock can get you to 3.1GHz without much problem.

I'm also thinking of building it as a dual boot with XP SP3 and S7 beta. Any comments?

Thanks guys! :D

Gigabyte are my favourite brand, followed by Asus, then MSI. All of them should allow you to play around with overclocking easily.

Ditto to GIGABYTE.

If you are going to go AMD quad core, go Phenom II. Pair it with DFI or Gigabyte. If you go crossfire with the Gigabyte board, be aware that some models lose the ability to use all sata slots as the lowest card covers them.

No one else mentioned it, but I wouldn't try to build this with a 500W psu. Most important part of any computer is its power supply. Get something in a known brand, with more than what you think you'll need. I've still running single core, but have a branded 550w, and it's enough for what I have in my computer.

Known brands include these below:

Enermax
Corsair
Hiper
Tagan
Thermaltake
OCZ
and
Xion

Power requirements.

HD4870 X2 -262W
GTX 280 - 178W

Add up what you have.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp

If you're going to sample Windows 7, put it on its own separate hard drive and keep things simple for later.

I'll second that--i have XP Home, Vista & Windows 7 Beta each on their own drive. I use hard drive racks and trays and just pop in the system I want to run. Easy, simple and complete isolation between systems.

I'll take a look at the PSU to ensure it is sufficient for the task.

I also like the idea of putting the OS's on seperate drives and swapping them.

I just updated this system same cpu (9950 black) that you are using. I bought a Asus M3N72-D and 4 gigs of Corsair Dominator memory (1066). I am running it with 2 Raptors and 2 9800GTX GFX cards in sli. The sound card is Creative Xfi and a TV tuner card. PSU is a 750 Watt Corsair. I wish I had spent a bit more for a better mainboard but this system rocks and seems to be stable at this point. Its been running for about two weeks now with Vista ultimate. When I 1st assembled it it would only see 2 gigs of memory in Windows and 4 in the bios. I downloaded all the windows updates and SP1 and it now sees 4 gigs in windows (32 bit), what gives? Any who sounds like like your on the right street. Also had to set the memory to 1066 in the bios, it booted at 800 on the 1st try. Good luck!!!!!!!!!!