Hello,

I'm looking to upgrade my computer soon, but have a few questions:

I plan on building an i7 920 proc, with X58 chipset,  windows 7 64 bits DAw (probably double boot with XP 32 bits in case). Audio cards would be HDSP Madi, AES 32, TCO with Sequoia, maybe MAx/MSP and live, and also Pro Tools 8 LE with MBox or 003.

I have narrowed my choice of motherboards to the followings:

Asus P6T (or P6T SE)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 or UD7

From my investigations, Asus seems less good (bad firewire chipset compare to Gigabyte TI chipset for instance). So I would tend to go the Gigabyte way.

Then I hesitate between the EX58 serie or the X58A serie:

X58A seems more future proof (USB3, SATA 6Gb) than EX58, but with only 1 PCI slot (compared to 2 on EX58) will be much more expensive for me as I own 2 PCI cards (HDSP Madi and AES 32 with TCO). So If I go this way, I'll need to buy an HDSPe Madi card.

My questions:
- Is there in my motherboard selection models to avoid, or one that would stands out, DAW wise (stability, efficiency, etc...)?
(I'm looking for an equivalent of what the P4C800 Deluxe Mobo was as a reference for daws back in the days.... What would be the rock solid reference now...)

- What would be the better way to install an HDSPe Madi card: on a PCIe 1* slot on the southbridge, or on a PCIe *8 or *16 directly on the X58 northbridge. I intend to use only one video card, but would there be any problem sharing the PCIe bus with the HDSPe card?

- would I see a performance difference between the HDSP Madi and HDSPe Madi (latency?)

- supposing I go the X58A way:
            would you rather advice the UD5 or UD7 motherboard?
            would there be any problem running one HDSPe MADI card with TCO alongside with an HDSP MADI or AES32 in the PCI slot?

- is there a way to connect to WC internally between HDSP HDSPe TCO cards so that no BNC connections are needed for Sync purposes?

- last, as a graphic card, I'm looking ideally for a dual (or triple) screen fanless card that could output video, (ideally HDMI and SD), and be able to support  a matrox triple head to go that I could add later. Any idea? Cheaper the better. Need no gaming card...

Thanks for your insights.

Best regards,

Laurent.