Evan, I've been impressed with Gigabyte motherboards recently. The last couple I've bought were really nice - well built, stable, and fast.

As for Intel CPUs... I'm still an AMD guy. I just can't see paying the premium price for a 3 or 4% difference in performance. However, I will say that the Intel chipsets are kicking AMD's butt lately. I don't know what happened to Via (they used to be the bomb, now they're kinda duds), but you pretty much need to buy AMD chipsets. Of course, nVidia chipsets used to be great too - until AMD bought ATi and they stopped playing nice with nVidia.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the promises of Intel's Quick Sync Video. There's only two programs that support it at this point, and if I recall correctly, they're both high-end packages (too pricey for my cheap blood). But there's hope for down the road. As long as Intel doesn't charge a fee to support the QSV, I'm sure everyone will be scrambling to add it in.

Back to Intel though: I have recently learned the hard way that Intel network cards are the bomb. I used to disparage their high priced cards. Back in the 10/100Mb days, the extra price made little difference. Now in the gigabit ethernet era, cheap and lousy NICs are all over - especially in RealTek chips embedded in motherboards. Slap in an Intel NIC and watch your throughput jump up about 20 to 30%. Amazing!