cabbspapp, your motherboard is not a dud. 400+ FSB for a 975x is good already. With low multiplier cpus, you need a P965, they will do 500-550 FSB easily. The 680i stops at roughly 500. And with 500FSB, you want 1000mhz RAM to run 1:1 at the least. I recommend DFI P965-S and Crucial Ballistix DDR-1000