found this combon down at tigerdirect. : Asus P5B Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard and an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz OEM Processor. Link : http://www.tigerdirect.ca/appl...&sku=MBM-P5B-E6400
Is this mobo suited for gaming (plan on installing a 7950 GT) with 2gb corsair dominator ? What do you guys think... what are the alternatives... i want a really decent gaming rig. Is it useful to get nforces even if i dont plan on getting SLI? Is there other similar asus boards that offer better performance?

Yes that mobo will work with the 7950 GT. The chip set (ie the north bridge) is a Intel P965, which is a farily new chip set. When you speak of performance do you want Over clock abilityor just out of the box performance, because if its out of the box performance it will be fine. If you were planing on OC'ing it then i would look into a different board as well as CPU.

The 965 chipset OCs well, but the Nvidia 680i or Intel 975x chipsets will probably both OC better as well as offering better stock performance. Keep your upgrade options open by going with the 680i if you can afford it, I believe Tiger has the eVGA 680i board for 260. This will allow you to go Sli in the future. Save a bit of cash by going with Corsairs XMS2 series rather than the dominator. The 6400 is a good CPU, but I think the reason Der suggested a different model is because the 6400 only has 2mb cache as opposed to the 4mb cache found in the 6600 and up. The 6600 is about 100 more, but oddly enough I've heard that the 6400 OCs better.

6300 and the 6600 are the OC champs!

between the
Asus P5B and the Intel D975XBXLKR, with both E6400s, which one is better ? i dont plan on going SLI anytime soon... also, is the cache on 6600s really a big difference?

Also, the Intel D975XBXLKR does not support 800mhz memory?? what does taht mean... my XMS2 corsair is 800mhz... whats gonna happen if i install it on an intel?

What do you think of a Intel 975XBX2KR + E6400 ?
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/appl...No=2563503&CatId=0