What Mobo ?

[dario1977]

I am looking to put together my first system, i intend to use the AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2 GHz processor, (socket 939) I have looked through these and other forums and i am stuck on my choice of mobo, originally i looked at these :

ASUS "A8N-SLI Deluxe"
or
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum

but as i want to stay with the AGP format i intend to look at these :

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, nForce3U, 939, Dual DDR400 8xAGP SATA, Raid
or
Asus A8V Deluxe 939 8xAGP, SATA, Raid, Dual DDR400

Are these any toward the top(ish) end ? If not anyone got any other suggestions for a mobo ?

[dario1977]

i mainly intend to use it for gaming,(the reason i went the AMD route) and also with a little burning and printing thrown in for good measure but i would like to build one tht is quite high spec too....just that the motherboard is my least knowledgable area.
So shouts for and against these 2 boards then plz.....

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, nForce3U, 939, Dual DDR400 8xAGP SATA, Raid
or
Asus A8V Deluxe 939 8xAGP, SATA, Raid, Dual DDR400

Or an alternative one if you like, along the same spec though plz.

[BipolarBill]

They are all good boards. I would choose the one with combination of the most features and the best price.

[causticVapor]

Also, consider whether SLI is really worth it or not. One of your boards is neither SLI nor PCIe, which sparks my comment.

[BadBadNeil]

I've personally just decided a little over a month ago between the Asus A8V, the MSI Neo 2 Platinum 939, and the 939 Epox board.

I went with the MSI because of it's good reviews, good placement of the board, and because of it's large list of features which to me personally made it the best bang out of the box. In the month I've had it, paired with a AMD64 3500+, it is incredibly faster than my other XP2600+ and was a breeze to setup.

To me personally I didn't see SLI and AGP will handle my needs well into the next year or two with my 6600GT card. The newer NF4 boards didn't have enough choices, the prices were too high, the reviews were mediocre, and I felt the technology was not mature enough to to consider buying.

If you must have the latest and greatest then go with the NF4 as it will give you more upgrade options with the PCI express that the NF3 boards don't offer but I think the cost is high at the moment. A NF3 board with socket 939, Dual DDR400, and AGP should suffice for a couple years with minor upgrades.

[jet.]

Here here, i'm planning on moving away from Ahtlon XP soon. You've mentioned the Asus and MSI S939 boards which are all highly recommended. But there is also the Epox board...

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2253&p=13

Have a read and see what you think.

There is also the DFI AGP board to look forward to in March/April. A definite date hasn't been set, but i think i'm gonna let current competitors duel it out and prices to drop. The 6800 took a big chunk outta my wallet too, but so so worth it. Just gotta get rid of the CPU bottleneck now.

Here is my current Top 5 "general consensus" jet. rankings. :D

1. MSI (excellent board, great bundle, huge popularity however a variety of known issues, more than likely caused by the percent of S939 owners with this board)
2. EPOX (matches MSI in terms of performance and costs less but stripped down in comparison with certain memory issues)
3. ASUS (nothing wrong with this board at all, just lacks the general support of S939 owners as people seem to be getting better experiences with the above two boards)
4. GIGABYTE (don't know much with their attempt, but some people have stuck by Gigabyte due to their customer support and it's general all round performance, and, well probably due to the above boards not quite working out for them :D)
5. DFI (i don't think you should really go with any other board than above, so i've stuck the board i'm waiting for)

Hope this helps.