Stay away from VIA
 
 
Go with an nforce 2 board
 
Stable, and fast

ABIT NF7-S
 
Try this one, is really priced well and loaded with features.

Unless you need SATA (and theres a fair chance you don't), the EPoX 8RDA+ is cheaper and has a similar feature set. The only exception is dual LAN but this isn't really all that useful. It also has 6 PCI slots, something no other nF2 board I'm aware of (save the FIC AU11 but that doesn't really count) does, the rest have between 3 and 5 PCI slots and/or a CMR slot.

I am pleased with my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe. This Nforce2 based mobo has many features. I have been very happy with this board since my Shuttle AK31 3.1 VIA-based board died out on me.

THe asus board is a bit more expensive than the Abit one.
 
I jsut jumped ship from a P4PE to an Abit IC7 and the quality on the Abit is way better.
 
Asus seems to be lax as of late with features, and all that plus a premium to buy thier boards

Asus is the most expensive, even though there's nothing special about it's stability/quality/features....(my friend has 2 asus board and they're more problematic then his new ECS/PCChips motherboard....
 
MSI board is a good choice since it has good price, and generally less problem.
 
Of cuz fastest board u can get is Nforce2 with dualDDR, but new KT400A is a good choice as well. As long as you have all latest BIOS/driver/windows/application updates VIA chipset will be fine...

The only two things the Asus an Abit nForce2 boards really offer over their competition are SATA and dual LAN, neither of which are all that useful and given these come at a USD$30-50 price premium (The 8RDA+ can be had for as low as USD$85) they're not really worth it and I honestly can't recommend either of them.

Quote:Asus is the most expensive, even though there's nothing special about it's stability/quality/features....(my friend has 2 asus board and they're more problematic then his new ECS/PCChips motherboard....

MSI board is a good choice since it has good price, and generally less problem.

Of cuz fastest board u can get is Nforce2 with dualDDR, but new KT400A is a good choice as well. As long as you have all latest BIOS/driver/windows/application updates VIA chipset will be fine...

I respectfully disagree.
The abit here:

http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/doc2/A19189.html

Is only $116.00 in the states. The Nf7-S with onboard video, which BTW is great for troubleshooting, is the same price cause it doesn't have SATA

Either way your good, and with the New WD Raptor 10k SATA drives being to cheap, I just ordered 2, SATA may seem like a great option, for upgrades and all
There was a time if you wanted the best performance for an AMD system you had to go with Via. Thankfully those days are over. The Nforce 2 boards are more stable, faster, and a lot less hassle. PLus the unified drivers make them a cinch to setup.

Stay away from Via like the plague, expecially when you have great chipsets like the Nforce 2 at great prices from all the great mobo vendors (Asus, MSI, ABIT, Gigabyte, etc.)

I agree that VIA has manufactured some problematic chipset, but that was like long time ago. The most famous example is Pro133a(compatibility), KT133(a)(686B+SB live! ATA100 data corruption), KT266(slow speed). Although i'm not fans of VIA by any means, but i think it's not as troublesome as you've think of. From KT266A & onwards, it's stability has been vastly improved. Any board(with any chipset) will have their own compatibility/stability problems, including nforce2, http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8250 , http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8014 (initially it has tons of problem and release date has been pushed back by a few times, take them like 1/2 yr to sort out the serious bugs), but eventually they'll be sorted out by BIOS/driver updates and/or chipset revisions. Even though many ppl has a tendency towards asus products (for quality), if you look closely they use the very same components as other manufacturers. So regarding to quality they don't have much advantage against others.
 
Note: SATA is available on majority of newer boards.......only dualLan has spotty availability.
 
Undoubtly Nforce2 offer best performance over VIA offerings, but it came at a cost. A fully loaded Nforce2 board is the most expensive AMD board for single processor.
 
Lastly people often ignore boards which equipped with SIS chipset, but they offer a very good speed/price ratio as well.

When your spending money why take the chance
 
 
With Nforce you can't go wrong
 
With Via.....well there's a much higher chance of problems

The main problem I have with current SATA implementations is that most of them connect via the PCI bus and this'll hurt performance in the long term. The exception is the SATA implementation in Intels new i875 chipset which is integrated into their ICH5 chip and connected straight into their hub-link architecture and not through PCI.
 
The other problem I have with it is the drive situation is a mess with price, performance and capacity varying all over the place. At one end, the cheaper and larger SATA drives are outperformed by the best (and more reasonably priced) PATA drives and at the other you have the Raptor which is well and truly where SATA is headed but it's high performance is offset by it's low capacity and high price (USD$160 for only 36Gb is outrageous).
 
SATA needs broader chipset integration and for 10,000rpm drives like the Raptors to become much, much cheaper (to the point of rivalling PATA drives) before it'll become seriously competitive with PATA. Most of the current SATA implementations will be obsolete by then so buying into it now is a waste of money. If you're serious about it now though, avoid the PCI solutions and go straight for Canterwood, it's the best short-term implementation out there. Me, I'll stick with my 120Gb Caviar SE and sit firmly on the sidelines.

Quote:THe asus board is a bit more expensive than the Abit one.

I jsut jumped ship from a P4PE to an Abit IC7 and the quality on the Abit is way better.

Asus seems to be lax as of late with features, and all that plus a premium to buy thier boards

Asus has the stability - but so does Abit now, and Abit is SUPERIOR! in over clocking feature - i have the BH7 myself.

Quote:Quote:Asus is the most expensive, even though there's nothing special about it's stability/quality/features....(my friend has 2 asus board and they're more problematic then his new ECS/PCChips motherboard....

MSI board is a good choice since it has good price, and generally less problem.

Of cuz fastest board u can get is Nforce2 with dualDDR, but new KT400A is a good choice as well. As long as you have all latest BIOS/driver/windows/application updates VIA chipset will be fine...

I respectfully disagree.
The abit here:

http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/doc2/A19189.html

Is only $116.00 in the states. The Nf7-S with onboard video, which BTW is great for troubleshooting, is the same price cause it doesn't have SATA

Either way your good, and with the New WD Raptor 10k SATA drives being to cheap, I just ordered 2, SATA may seem like a great option, for upgrades and all
There was a time if you wanted the best performance for an AMD system you had to go with Via. Thankfully those days are over. The Nforce 2 boards are more stable, faster, and a lot less hassle. PLus the unified drivers make them a cinch to setup.

Stay away from Via like the plague, expecially when you have great chipsets like the Nforce 2 at great prices from all the great mobo vendors (Asus, MSI, ABIT, Gigabyte, etc.)

i just know i have had a lot of problems with ASUS P4 boards. wierd problems too.

My friend bought the board to a dealer and he saw other ppl complaining about strange problems about their board too.
 
And now KT600 is out and it beats nforce2 in dual channel....this proves that they can still make some good stuff
 
Here's the review: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDc2

I bought an ASUS board because it was the cheapest i could find (for about $100CND). I'm making a low cost system anyways. This is my firs AMD system ever. it better not give me problems. It is VIA chipset too.
the same motherboard (the same features) with nForce2 Chipset was about $250 CND. nVidia is always the most expensive one and i think if some ATI could Kick some nVidia butt in terms of price/performence, then i'll go with Via this time.
 
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
ASUS A7V8X-X
512MB PC2700
 
this is going to be my testing computer for fooling around with different os and software without being worried that i may lose anything.