I am about to get hold of one of these as a replacement for a bug ridden ASUS P5E3. (poorly designed board essentially X38 put onto a P35 board without an EPS 12V 8 pin connector)...

2 Questions.

1) How good is this board with 8GB? I remember when it first came out people had issues with RAM compatibility, but I recall since BIOS 0801 onwards ASUS have managed to improve the memory compatibility..
2) How good is this board with a QX9650 on air (Xigmatek S1284EE with Crossbow backplate (has a hole for the Fujitsu chip)) ?

Ideally (and yes this might to too difficult). I would like to run between 3.4-3.6Ghz @ 1600FSB and (if possible) 8GB @ 1600Mhz CL8/9

The RAM I have is a later revision of the OCZ PC3-12800EB RAM (8GB worth).

I have already prepared my USB stick with the 1301 BIOS to flash to the board

Thanks for your advice in advance guys.

John