Was hoping to get some help on bios revisions before buying.
Any thoughts on which revision to stay away from?

Also... These are the other pieces I am buying along with the board.

1. Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz 6MB 1333MHz LGA775
2. Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-12
3. EVGA E-GEFORCE 9600GT Superclocked 675MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3

Everything else I have already. Although I may be looking at a new PSU soon.

Any thoughts on these 3 pieces? Anything I should be aware of?

TIA.

Also wanted to mention a few more things...

Due to fmaily budget constraints, this computer upgrade
will have to be done over a 6 weeks period.

So until then, I have no intentions to OC until I can upgrade the PSU
and hard drives and Soundcard. I am still using an ATA133 drive which will
also be replaced within the week. New HD is still on order.

Save some money get the e8400. Put said money into a 4gb kit.

I'm not sure what BIOS you need to be aware of, but I think people were reporting their GA-P35s were able to support e8400 without a bios update. Hopefully others will be able to verify or discredit that.

You want Rev 2.0 6 usb on rear panel vs. 4 usb on Rev 1.0
Bios F7 or higher for the 45nm cpu

Updating BIOS is easy as pie with the gigabyte @Bios program you can do it from your desktop~

I have also read in these forums that the Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400
doesn't play nice with this MB. Can anyone confirm this?

Or is this a case of PEBKAC?

Good advice, that's what I did.
I just got one 2 days ago.
rev. 2, bios F7
I flashed to F8a (for the Wolfdale) even though F7 let it install.

Update:

A friend of mine is going to give me his Intel Core 2 Duo E4500
So I will use this CPU in the meantime and use the money saved for
a better soundcard.

As for the Mobo, CPU and RAM timings... is there anything special I should know about this combo?

TIA

You don't need a sound card to play games on the DS3L. Mine sounds great.

I'd be careful with the Crucial Ballistix memory.

I have a DS3R and it gave me nothing but problems (even after 3 RMA's). I finally switched to Kingston HyperX and haven't had a single problem. I'd advise to at least consider other options.

I have a question about the video card you are choosing. I was wondering, with this motherboard, are you able to use video cards specifying PCI Express 2.0 x16? The specs for this motherboard don't say PCI Express 2.0 x16, just x16. I have this same motherboard and am unsure if I am able to upgrade to the 9xxx series because of this confusion.

Can anyone clear this up? Is the GA-P35-DS3L compatible with PCI Express 2.0 x16 cards?