2 x problems with your spec above. The Intel Motherboard only has 4 slots for RAM and 3GB RAM (as mentioned above) is too little for MBing. Ideally you want 8GB+ now with 64bit OS.

Go for either an Asus, MSI, Gigabyte mobo as they all include 6 RAM slots so you can setup 2 x groups of triple channel memory.

The new quad cores are intels first native quad cores with 4 cores on the one die. The other big plus is an onboard memory controller making the FSB redundant. Finally and best of all for us boxers, Nehalem brings back hyperthreading which means our new quad cores will have 8 virtual cores for assigning to different characters.

The motherboards have the advantage of housing 12GB RAM without going to expensive 4GB DIMMS. They can also accomodate Crossfire and SLI on the same platform. For overclockers, removing the FSB makes the northbridge much cooler for overclocking and that cheap little i7 920 can OC to 3.9GHz on air quite comfortably.

Cheers