Motherboard recomendations??

[SunDizzle]

Trying to build a new pc with an Athlon XP 2000 or faster. What is a stable MoBo that can handle at least an 8x AGP Video card (gaming of course) and 200-400 fsb?

[teengeek88]

Asus A7N8X-E are very good, i have the regular a7n8x it is amazing!! other than that i think DFI boards are good i have had good luck with them

good luck

[DanGrease]

Asus or Soyo are my favorite motherboard brands.

dan

[Galloway1520]

Are you limiting yourself to XP cpus?
I have 2 suggestions:
1) For Right Now, consider an Athlon64 3000+ system-- you are future-proofing for Win64, in as much as you can really do so, and getting a very powerful system for just $150-200 more than an XP system.
2) For a few months from now, consider Intel's new socket775 mobo/CPU platform. This combo should have 64bit extentions available (future proof) & shouldn't be "Dead Ended" like their present socket478. This option will probably be the (much) more expensive option.

Just a thought or two for you.

[HeadBand]

anything with an nforce2 chipset will be great but my personal preferance is gigabyte

[nickparente]

I would recommend nothing more than my current board. I am running an Abit KV7. In my 10+ years in the computer field I have never seen a board so stable. I am by no means gently running it, either. I have like 6 hard drives connected to it, a DVD+/-R, digital audio recording card, another IDE controller (PCI), firewire, etc etc etc. I am using Samsung DDR-400 RAM I got from MS4ME.com (great company, btw) and an Athlon 2600+. Also I am running an 8x Gigabyte AGP. Windows 2000 - nothing's crashed in over a month of having it. STABILITY!!! Tremendous board. Don't consider anything but this - you need to trust me here.

Nick P.

[shawshank62]

Epox 8rda3+, i have the 8rda+, and its an awsome, stable board. And the 8rda3+ is even better with 400 fsb.

[Starfury_2260]

My Abit NF7-S runs great. Got a 2600+ barton on it running 3200+ speed and totally stable.

[TheHardDriveMan]

I have a DFI NF2 U Infinity board, mobile barton 2500+, and Mushkin Level II ddr running 500mhz fsb and 2-2-2 timings on the ram. DFI IS the best nforce 2 board on the market right now. Nothing can even come close to being stable @ 500mhz and beyond as the DFI does. My northbridge requires no extra cooling as well. On top of that...the Infinity is only 93 dollars. If you want to pay a little more for something like the a7n8x deluxe which I owned a few weeks ago that can barely overclock past 400mhz fsb, has a bios with almost nothing to change, and an ugly puke yellow/tan pcb then do so at your loss.

And in reply to what nickparente said, yes, you are running it gently. If anything crashed while you were running @ stock settings (You were not even using it to its full rated specs with your 2600+) then something is seriously wrong and would probably be your fault and not the hardware's fault. Just because something runs at it's stated specs or lower doesn't make it a rock solid stable platform.

[dragoer]

Having built a dozen XP systems during the past few months based on lowest cost for reasonable performance using mobo's from MSI, DFI, ASUS, Leadtek, and Abit, I agree with the previous reply regarding the NFII 400 chip set. Stay away from Leadtek, not really bad but lacking BIOS options, and go for best deal on any of the others. The DFI Infinity is outstanding, but I built an Ultra AL that is also excellent and their US support is top notch. My board is the MSI 6570 ILSR loaded with features and running my Barton at 200 fsb (3200) solidly for over a year. My friend's NF7S with a Barton is also solid. Two A7N8-X's are in office systems with XP1800's running solidly at 166fsb. Choose a Barton (any speed that is the best price) and think carefully whether or not the extra goodies on the MCP-T mobo's are worth the extra cost. Regardless, you will be changing your system in 18 months guaranteed, so that the double cost of 64bit now won't pay the way. Same goes for VGA card; my soft-modded 9500 for $150 still sizzles.