Some Very General Build Questions

[meths]

I'm gonna buy and I5 or I7 shortly but am confused and have some easy questions for you lot.

1) What's the best motherboard chipset for these processors? Is it the X58?

2) I see many people getting 4gb or 8gb ram but should I be looking to be 6gb of DDR3 (3x2gb) so I can run them in triple channel mode?

Any advice is appreciated as I've not upgraded for years and am finding all the options a bit overwhelming atm.

 

[meths]

Does one perform better than the other? Out of the P67 and Z68 I mean.

 

[meths]

Interesting. So I can possibly keep my existing DDR2 ram if I can clock it high enough. That just might be the difference between me going for the I7 over the I5.

Thanks guys you've been a big help.

Edit: Looked a bit more and I5, Z68, DDR3 seems the way to go.