Getting the very best S775 mainboard
 

As some of you know I'm having a lot of problems with my striker extreme mainboard. That's why I want to exchange it with something else.

I was thinking about the DFI P35-T2R. But I don't want to make a big mistake. Should I hold out for a different board on P35 chipset, or should I look into the X38 - X48 - P45 for the future (or perhaps even the nvidia nforce 780 - although I don't feel like it -)?

I want to run an E6600 with 2 GB OCZ Urban Elite RAM and my old trusty 8800 GTS 640 MB.

I have nothing but good experience with gigabyte DQ6.

DQ6 is great, but P35 DQ6 is being replaced with X38 DQ6.

However, there is little reason for a X38, but Gigabyte seems to be pulling out all the stops for X48. I'd either suggest P35 or the X48, and simply skipping X38. Info here http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=315

So you advise me to cope with my current system for the time being?

I would also like to know the following:

I'm running a RAID-0 (stripe) on my main hard disks. Will this new board along with its different (intel) RAID controller be able to read the data created on the nforce 680 RAID controller?

no the RAID 0 array will be lost, so make a backup of all your data

I was talking about the X38, wich I used for yorkfield testing.

I have nothing against X38, but P35 version is cheaper if Xfire is not needed, and X48 should slot into the same price point as X38 but with some new tangible improvements and BIOS options for enthusists. Will be the best/last chipset pre-Nehalem when everything changes.

I thought P45 was coming out after X48?

P35 is the mainstream chipset, X38 the enthusiast. P45 will be the next mainstream chipset, with X48 the next enthusiast chipset. P45/X48 launch together 2Q'08.

From what I heard X48 should be among us by the january/february timeframe, whereas P45 eaglelake should be released by april?