Motherboard Help.....

[AzzMan]

I'm planning on gettin a AMD 64 soon and im having trouble deciding which motherboard to get. I'm thinking about either Asus k8v-delux or Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro. They're both about the same price, but the gigabyte has the nforce3 250 chipset (1600mhz bus). Anyone had any experiences with these boards that can help me out?

 

[Asus]

The MSI K8T Neo based on the K8T800 chipset is a solid popular board as well. There are two version, one runs at 95$ while the other is about 125$. The more expensive model has a promise raid controller for SATA and 2 firewire ports.

The Asus is also very solid which I would probably lean towards out of the K8T800 chipset boards.

Chaintech's Nforce3 150 board is pretty popular as well.

But I would probably look to the Nforce3 250 boards as they start coming out.
Both Chaintech and Gigabyte have boards using the Nforce3 250.
Gigabyte supports 4 SATA drives while the Chaintech boards support 2.
Gigabyte ($135) uses the standard Realtek 8 channel codec.
Chaintech's first board ($100) uses 5.1 channel AC'97 while the 2nd ($180) uses 7.1 channel w/24bit audio.
More boards are coming out soon.

The Nforce3 boards are considered more stable and overall a better option.
The Nforce3 boards also have a builtin Gigabit eithernet and Firewall which is awesome.
If you havn't read up on Nforce3 250 then here.

 

[Jammydodger]

I'd go for the asus, iv never had a problem with them yet.

 

[gh0st]

The MSI K8T Neo based on the K8T800 chipset is a solid popular board as well. There are two version, one runs at 95$ while the other is about 125$. The more expensive model has a promise raid controller for SATA and 2 firewire ports.

100% reccommend the second one (though the manual sucks and isnt color coded).

 

[Asus]

I want to see Retail boards reviewed before I make my own mind up but I am leaning toward the nForce3 250 as the better solution.
No problems with the other boards...just the builtin gigabit lan and firewall along with solid performance is very nice.

Built-in doesn't mean onboard but even more than that. Rather than the southbridge chip having the gigabit lan and all the bandwidth going through that bus to get to the northbridge (and then from there to memory or CPU), the nForce3 250 doesn't have a southbridge because eveything is intergrated into the Northbridge (which is why they don't offer soundstorm onboard anymore). It's a one chip solution.

 

[AzzMan]

Thanx for the help guys. I think I'm just gonna wait out on this and see what comes out in the next few months.

I need help on something else though, and don't really wanna start a new thread. I'm looking to get some new memory for my comp and wondering if you guys could help me out. I was thinking about corsair xms, but im not an OC'er and my friend has told me I would be wasting money if i got that. Any suggestions?

 

[Asus]

Corsair XMS 512MB PC3200 2-3-3-6
Good price. Solid corsair memory. Very speedy.
If you wanted 1GB then just grab 2.
2x $132 = $164 which is the same price as the Corsair XMS PC3200 1GB (512MBx2) 3-3-3-8 paired memory sticks. 3-3-3-8 would be quiet a bit slower. :\