choosing motherboards

[smoovelee]

I'm the kind of guy who is a comparison shopper. For example, when I buy suits I don't buy the first one I like I shop around. Price is not by any means my only consideration. I also look for quality, durability, and how well it fits me(in the case of a mobo how well it suits my needs). But I don't know much about mobo's. I look for reviews on boards but I'm finding all boards have mixed reviews and some boards have more weakpoints than others. I'm not looking for brand loyaltyadvice just some solid info from builders and upgraders on what to look for when choosing a motherboard. Notice I said what not where because I know newegg.com is the place to be. smoovelee

[Grentarc]

I know I might be a little biased towards AMD chips... but not for board... I own an Abit board for my Athlon XP, I own a Tekram board for my P3, and a Microstar for the K6 and a PC-Chips for my Celeron... I hate the PC-Chips... soooo unstable (it is a Baby AT totally intergrated POS ) The MSI board is fast for the K6 and the Tekram was not very overclockable... the Abit on the other hand is very stable, very overclockable, has RAID onboard and a host of other features. I would recomend Abit board because of two other people i know own BP6's and love them to death... I have a KT7A-RAID board, and it support my Athlon XP 1700+ (running @ 1800+).. you can increase the FSB to the board and CPU, then add up to another 28 MHz to just the CPU's FSB... the voltage can be increased by 0.025 v steps.

I recomend Abit for their stability (mine has never crashed), overclockability and performance

[the only weakspot is the SDRAM, not DDR RAM]

[missiveusa]

You first must decide which chipset you want to go with. That will narrow down your choices. For the AMD Socket A, the VIA KT-266A is the clear choice. Tom's Hardware has a great rounup review on KT-266A mainboards. You'll be able to pick a winner there. If an Intel P4 478 is your fancy, I suggest sticking with the DDR memory chipsets; avoid the SDRAM solution. Perhaps someone else can give you their opinion on the best P4 chipset/mainboard. Good luck.

[Rugor]

I personally have had good results with Abit, Asus, Soyo, Promise, and Giga-Byte. Having said that, I don't want to jsut recommend a brand.

What I can say is look for a major maker. I have one rule that I have followed for years that has always stood me in good stead:

If the maker won't put their name on their product I won't put my money in their wallet.

Go to their website, and look up the board, if you can see their name on the expanded picture of the motherboard, it's worth considering. If you can't: Don't buy it.