Need help choosing Athlon 64 X2 motherboard

Hi all--
I've come to the conclusion that it's time to replace a motherboard that's given me nothing but trouble for the past year and a half (flaky USB and PS2, crappy memory support, frequent crashes), and am looking at something to use as a platform for a Athlon 64 X2 4200 or 4400.

I'm much more concerned with stability and compatibility then I am with overclocking features, SLI, onboard digital surround, and the like. As long as it's within reason, price isn't a huge concern.

I've been reading reviews and digging through message boards, but I'm having a hard time pinning down what the best boards are right now.

Any recomendations would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Matthew Pepple

 

This is a pretty good one bt DFI :

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=246485

ASUS is good too. What do you plan on using your computer for mainly?

 

Thanks for the reply. It will mostly be used for kinda prosumer-level video and audio production, so being SATA II compatible would be good, as well having the usual smattering of USB 2 and firewire ports. I won't be using any onboard audio or video, so that's all pretty moot.

I'm coming from some bad experiences with Asus boards (an A7N8X deluxe and an A7N8X-E deluxe), I was never able to get either to run stable with a 400mhz... so I'm a little bit weary of ASUS right now.

 

Personally, I'm a fan of Gigabyte, MSI, and ABIT. You may want to take a look at these:

Abit KN8 Ultra
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127222

Gigabyte GA-K89 Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128301

 

Hi, I don't have an answer to which one you should pick but definately do not go for ABIT FATAL1TY AN8 SLI because a friend has spent a small fortune on an AMD 64 bit system with this board and twin 6800 gt's non of which work because of the via chipset that sits on this board. You can trawl the various forums for hours (I have!) and there appears no definitive answer to this problem. So I would say steer clear of this combination - AMD 64, Via chipset & SLI which unfortunately this board has all three. Good luck.

 

Check this article out

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050513/index.html

abit and msi produce the most feature packed quality boards IMO and in the article,very little seperates them in performance or stability you have to read which board has the features you want

Adrenachrome,Welcome to the MG forums ,when giving an opinion here we like to back it up with evidence of a wide spread problem,its easy to be put off by one bad experience,if you have an article in mind post a link

 

Ok no worries, here is a link ( http://forum.abit-usa.com/forumdisplay.php?f=73) to the usa abit forum which is busting at the seems with problems all concerning this board and more specifically this via chipset. I understand what your saying so please accept my apology if it came across as just a personal gripe (I infact don't have one of these boards) or an un-substantiated moan, this is honestly a very large issue with most owners of this board.
Just trying to help.

 

Thanks for all the responses.

I've seen that Tom's Hardware round-up, which is great, but I've learned the hard way that those can be a bit superficial-- they're good at rounding-up features and benchmarking performance, but they don't (and can't) show how they're performing out in the real world, where their flaws are laid bare by thousands of users, and their different components and configurations.

I'm not terriblly concerned about the features of the board, as almost all of the ones I've looked at meet my requirements, so I'm more interested in hearing personal experiences (positive and negative), like in Adrenochrome's link. I know that's kind of dangerous, people like to complain a lot about bad hardware on forums, but at the same time, the owner's of the boards know their flaws and their strengths.

And again, I'm really interested in how these boards are running X2s. The board needs to be complatible out of the box, because I won't have a spare processor to flash the bios.

Thanks again, please keep them coming.

Matthew Pepple

 

Ive got an ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard, which has never given me problems, its extremely stable, overclocks well(but you dont need to worry about that) it makes it sooooo much better, in my experiences, if you get a motherboard with an nVIDIA chipset.

Also, my dad has a music production computer in our garage with the following specs :

MSI motherboard (not sure which)
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
1GB Corsair PC2700 RAM
160GB 7200RPM Western Digital Hard drive
M-Audio Delta 1010 soundcard + Rack digital recording system

 

Yum! M-Audio....

 

The system I'm building/replacing uses the Delta 1010's little brother (the 66).

 

Awww. The 1010 is good though If your budget allows you should definitely consider it, otherwise the 66 should be good!