AMD or Intel?

[WTE_Galway]

Assuming you decide INTEL the other issue to be considered is whether you want to invest money in a deprecated/outdated chipset.

The current Sandy Bridge 1155 chipsets replace the older 1156 i3/i5/i7 motherboard. It comes in two breeds:

a) The Sandy bridge P67 which allows overclocking of K series processors but needs a separate graphics card.
b) The Sandy Bridge H67 which does not overclock (even with a K) but enables on-board built in Intel graphics.

These two chipsets supersede the 1156 chipsets currently used by CPU's like the i5-750. The 1156 chipset will start to disappear.

Note that both the new Sandy Bridge 1155 chipset and the older 1156 chipsets used dual channel ram (not triple) and have a limited number of PCIe lanes - meaning that three or more graphic cards in SLI at once may bottleneck. ( Note most review sites are saying triple channel ram does not give a noticeable performance improvement in real life and the 1155/1156 chipsets appear fine with single or dual graphic cards. )




What does this mean ?

a) The 1156 is superseded and should only be a consideration if you can get a bargain basement price.

b) The 1366 chipset will also eventually be superseded with a Sandy Bridge version - but not till much later this year later this year. If you currently want triple channel ram, or three or more graphics cards, then you are stuck with the older 1366 chipset for a while longer.