[ZmaN]

well not too sure if im gettin a new pc yet, but ill be a good boy and do my research.....

     Well I have come across ALOTTA brands of motherboards, ive only worked with An Asus board, and Albatron Board, and suttin else (dont remember the brand).  I wanna know what are good motherboards, models AND Brands (I want both).  It must be 939, and support X2 (I think they all do).  Also, im considering an Nforce 4 Chipset the most, over the other chipsets.....

[phatosealpha]

Gonna overclock?  Looking for SLI?  What features do you need?

[mikhael]

I'm looking at this one for a my beater PC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123246

[redmenace]

try www.tomshardware.com

[MatthewPapa]

Get the DFI SLI-DR
its a great board with lots of features and spectacular results for overclocking

[CP5670]

Get that new Asrock board with the M1695 chipset. If you don't need SLI, it beats the top nforce4 boards in overall stock performance, has superior compatibility, overclocks better and is ridiculously cheap for its performance. It's missing a few extraneous features and there are a few small issues like the positions of some connectors and limited voltage adjustments (a new BIOS will supposedly come out to fix this), but it's hard to complain for that price.

If you want SLI, the DFI one is the best overall.

[Grey Wolf]

Asus or MSI. Those are the companies I've had the best experience with.

[phatosealpha]

That's the new ULi chipset, right?  Been thinking about getting one of those and giving my g/f my neo 2 when I build her machine.  Full AGP and PCI-e compatability sound very nice.

[CP5670]

Yeah, that's a very useful thing for upgraders. I would have gotten this board in a heartbeat if it had been available back in February. There is also support for a future riser card that will allow an upgrade to socket M2 and DDR2. They already have a 939 card like this for their 754 boards, which is about $30 and has no performance hit, so it looks like a promising feature as well.

[ZmaN]

Originally posted by phatosealpha
Gonna overclock?  Looking for SLI?  What features do you need?

Well, overclocking MAYBE, i dont have much xperience with it....  SLI i cant afford, so its kinda useless to get an SLI Motherboard, unless you think differently...  It must be Socket 939, have PCI Express, a few PCI Slots, a nice BIOS.....  It should support the highest speed DDR RAM (oh and I have a question, I have 3 256 MB Sticks of RAM DDR 333, can I use them on an Athlon 64 Mtoherboard together?).....   Hmm, cables and maybe some extra games or goodies...  any more features you guys recommend would be great.....


and the Brands everyone is telling me is: DFI, Asus, Abit, MSI.  they good or not?

[ZmaN]

and what is PCI Express x1 used for?  I see them all the time on motherboards, but what goes in them and where can I get that stuff?

[Grey Wolf]

You could use 2. You really want to get DDR400 (PC3200) though.

As for those four brands, they all have good reputations, though for slightly different markets.

[Scuddie]

From what you said, I think it's best you get an MSI K8N Neo4-F board.  You can find it for about 80 bucks.  It doesn't have SLI support, nor does it have non-spec OCing options, but it gets the job done very well.  An alternative is ASUS A8N-E, which has an extra PCI-Ex1 slot and has a few bells and whistles.  Costs a bit more though.

[CP5670]

There are hardly any PCIEx1 cards available right now. I think I saw a TV tuner card somewhere once, but that was it.

3 memory sticks can't be used on any Athlon 64 board. You can use 1, 2 or 4, with 2 being preferable. DDR333 actually has a much smaller hit on A64s than you would think, but 512mb total memory is a major bottleneck in several modern games.

Those brands are fine, but I'm not sure about MSI. Last I heard, their high end boards (Neo2 plat and Neo4 plat) were very hit or miss, with excellent performance and features but far too many reliability issues and bugs, although their midrange products are apparently better. Asrock is actually the budget division of Asus and the boards are said to have the same build quality.

[supermaitro]

Searching only for a certain brand of motherboards isn't always the best thing mind you, I recommend trying to get besides a good brand, to get also a good chipset, in this case I would recommend Nvidia chipsets (Nforce3 or Nforce4) and completely not-recommend VIA chipsets.

And stay away from PC-Chips motherboards

[Grey Wolf]

I've used an MSI KT3 Ultra (KT333) and an MSI K8T Neo2-F (K8T800 Pro), and the only problem I had with them is when I flashed from the v.9.1 BIOS to the v.9.2, which had some stability problems, and with the v3 series BIOS, which forced me to run my RAM at CL2.5 instead of CL2 (that problem was fixed with the upgraded from v.3.3 to v.9.1).

In a bit of a change from most people, I'd almost recommend getting a K8T890-based board. I've had better experiences with VIA than nVidia in the past, specifically with a nForce 2-based Soltek board. However, the range of boards isn't really enough for the K8T890 to be an option.

[CP5670]

Not all VIA chipsets are as bad as everyone says. The K8T800 pro was overall superior to the nforce3, although the newer K8T890 has various performance issues and lacks in features.

Anyway, that ULi M1695 chipset handily beats everything else out there right now. It would be good if some of the better known companies make high end boards with it.

[Scuddie]

To be fair, nForce3 was not designed for gaming rigs, it was designed for workstations.  Also, it seemed a bit hackish in regards to the 939 versions of the board, and it was very unoptimized.  The difference between the nForce3 and the nForce4 was like night and day.

As for M1695, I can't see anything special about it at all, except for the fact that it's relatively cheap...  And remember, the KT133 was cheap, and look how miserable that was.

[CP5670]

It's basically got everything. Full speed AGP 8X and 20 PCIE lanes (same as nforce4), stock performance that equals or is better than the fastest nf4 boards, and the usual extras like SATA2 and GbE, although that Asrock board doesn't have these. Several people are also reporting stable 400mhz HT speeds with the Asrock board, which is well beyond what the best nforce4 boards can attain. The fact that it's so cheap only makes things better.

[WMCoolmon]

CP: 400mhz? I thought HT moved at well over a 1000.