Of the currently available to order, which is considered the best?
the best way i can describe them is "swiss cheese".
non are perfect, and it really depends on what you want.
stable, non overclock with good features ASUS, B u T it seems that they are not conroe capable out the box and require flashing to more recent BIOS. So this means if you put a conroe into them they dont work. Rumors that retail stepping work out the box on the board, but again rumors.
they overclock well, but ppl seem to be getting variable results anywhere from 400-450 with nothing guaranteed.
on 1066 strap the asus board has better performance than the intel bad axe.
there is also a v-dropo problem with the motherboard that required modding to fix. Also max v you can put through the mem controler is 1.65.
the bad axe is good for extreme overclocking but again requires an assortment of modding depends on the extent of your overclocking. On 1066 strap you get anywhere between 370-400fsb(dont quote me on this).
aslo some of the boards seem to die and take the memory with them when more than 2.2v is put through the memory, again i stress some so i dont know what the situation is exactly.
the dfi board seem to top out at 370fsb on 1066 strap have not got a clue if this has been rectified with modding or bios update.
if i had to choose now i would take the asus, but then agian i think i will wait a while for better boards. i cant be bothered with extreme OC on air, so a e6700 with 400fsb is great for me.
best to check with someone who has either of these boards for better explanations.
Also i realise the nVidia cards will work fine in any of the boards, however when are the Conroe/SLi Mobo's expected?
technically with the Intel chipset, you can run sli but with hacked drivers, they are about somewhere just need to search a little and ask the right person nicely.
nvida chipset mobo would, realistically, be expected sometime around September or early October.