I am considering either an Asus or Gigabyte X79 motherboard with 8 DIMM sockets, a FW port for older HDV/DV capture and for the rest up-to-date. I’ll figure that one out later, but it looks like the choice is limited to the Asus Sabertooth X79, the Asus P9X79 WS or the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5. I like that the Asus P9X79 WS has two 1 Gbps NIC’s and more SATA-600 and USB3 connections. 2 NIC’s is advantageous when using a network and/or a NAS. Initial preference of mobo: Asus P9X79 WS
Special consideration must be given to the layout and positioning of the PCIe-3.0x slots in light of the videocard chosen (see later under video card) because of the three slot width required for high-end video cards.
