Northbridge?

Im looking at new motherboards and there are several northbridge chipsets that i see... which should i look for?

AMD phenom IIx4 95W

the chips i see are
785G
790x
790GX
890GX

Other things that will be going in jic you need to know
4gb ddr3 ram 1333 (8 later on)
ati 5770 or 5870 (depending on how much $$ i save, will be crossfired... probably 5770 due to power consumption)
creative sound card.

The differences between chipsets are graphics only AFAIK.
The higher the number, the better the integrated graphics.

so since im putting in a gpu it dosnt matter?

It does matter. I'm not really familiar with the AMD side of things, but generally the higher the number the newer the chip is. The northbridge connects the CPU, RAM, and PCIe x16 slots. You can see a diagram of it here. I would concentrate on the top 3 chips and research them a little, and read what people are saying about them. Newer chips aren't always better chips.

The 890 is the best, I do believe

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mDust

It does matter. I'm not really familiar with the AMD side of things, but generally the higher the number the newer the chip is. The northbridge connects the CPU, RAM, and PCIe x16 slots. You can see a diagram of it here. I would concentrate on the top 3 chips and research them a little, and read what people are saying about them. Newer chips aren't always better chips.

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I believe all NBs do anymore is handle the PCI and PCIe busses. With the i-series CPUs, both AMD and Intel are moved over to on-die RAM controllers (except maybe the Atom).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by x88x

I believe all NBs do anymore is handle the PCI and PCIe busses. With the i-series CPUs, both AMD and Intel are moved over to on-die RAM controllers (except maybe the Atom).

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I didn't know AMD went that direction as well. I guess I do now!

Yup, AMD actually switched over back with the Athlon 64 generation. That's why you never saw any DDR2 s939 MBBs.