Whats the best motherboard brand?

[munkeyboy123]

im looking to upgrade a big step, right now im running a athalon processor @ 900mhz with 200mhz fsb on a FIC AZ11 main board with a KT133 chipset, VIA VT 8363 (north), VIA 686A (super south), and 256mb pc133 sdram. Thats what i have now what i want is either p4 or celeron 2ghz and up with an 8x agp and i DONT need that many pci slots. i see soyo and fic and xfx and alot of other brands and i dont really know which one is reliable and good i dont care what type of memory it takes. need your help i like my fic mainboard but i dont know where to buy them. but if yall know if soyo or xfx or any other company is good tell me, plus any one know where i can get a 2ghz and up p4 or celeron motherboard with 8x agp bundle under $200 tell me

[S.D.Willie]

why celery if you're going to get pentium? have you thought about amd's higher end cpu's? the athlon xp's are nice. new egg is a great place to buy anything pc related. i used to buy only asus boards but the last 2 have been epox and i love 'em.

SD

[munkeyboy123]

well i have looked at the higher end amd's and they seem nice but they dont seem as fast as p4s, but they might have higher multytasking speeds i dunno, epox i heard alot about them but ill check em out

[VERT]

I can recomend a few mobo manufaturers and Soyo is one of them. I have a Soyo mobo (KT333) at home and its damb stable, not so good for overclocking but like I said - very stable.

[beppodmime]

If you're just going to get a Celeron, go with AMD instead. Pound for pound better processors than the Celerons. And sure, the P4's are better processors if you're looking for the higher end, but if you want to save yourself a few bucks, AMD is a better bet, IMO.

If you're not looking to overclock, I'd recommend something along the lines of an Athlon XP 2500+, a stick or two of PC2700 memory, and either an Abit NF7 mainboard, or an Epox 8RDA+. I have hear many good things about both boards, and have personal experience with the Epox 8RDA+, as well as their 8RGA+ (same board with onboard video).

Soyo boards are good, as well. In terms of quality, as long as you buy from a reputable vendor, such as NewEgg, you should be good to go redardless. All of the top mobo manufacturers are putting out some very reliable products right now, and even though a few bad boards might make it to consumers, if you purchased it through a good vendor, the RMA process should be fairly hassle free. I had to RMA my first 8RGA+ with NewEgg, and while it was inconvenient, the support through their site made it as painless as it could possiby be.

If you are looking for a P4 setup, any of the C stepping chips, the ones that run on the 800MHz FSB, should give you plenty of ooomph for a time to come. Mobo's I'd recommend are the Abit IS7 (Springdale) or the IC7 (canterwood), if you're feeling spendy. The Soyo boards based on the Springdale and Canterwood (865 and 875, respectively) chipsets from Intel, also look good, as well.

Just what are you planning on doing with your system, anyhow? Are you going to be gaming? Any real intensive computing such as rendering or media encoding? Or is this just going to be a basic internet with some light gaming machine?

This will help in deciding whether or not you can actually make your price point.

[Chiguy]

I've used Soyo and Asus boards before. The Soyo was a KT333 that worked well except it kept crashing until disabled the onboard sound and put in my own sound card a year later. I haven't heard of anyone who has had this problem though. I had to RMA the board (unsure of whether the CPU or board was defective at the time so I RMAed both, probably more likely the CPU) and afterwards got the Asus which I am running now with good results.

[munkeyboy123]

um ok im gonna be using this board for interneting and pretty intense gaming thats why i need one with 8x agp, ive been looking at alot of different ones and i can only ifnd 800mhz fsb on mobo's i dont know what RMA means so could someone tell me please. im probably gonna go with a soyo or epox maybe a fic if i can find one, ive heard alot of people haveing problems with the 8RDA+, dunno if they are true, ive looked at th KT333 and i liked it alot so. ive never used newegg.com but ive heard really really good replies about it i think it got a customer rating of like 9.82 so it must be good. so ill check it out, anyone know a good computer case for a motherboard like this? i was gonna get this antec full tower with like 4 fans and a 350 psu would that be enough?

[S.D.Willie]

RMA = its a return authorization number you get when you have something bad, defective, etc. when you return something most people just say " i rma'd it" meaning theye returned/exchanged it.

btw, i love my epox 8rda+ so nay, to the naysayers. i dont think youll have issues with a 350 watt p.s.u. i had a 300 watt in my antec case for a while with 3 case fans on my newer system.

[ragtop]

You have a bunch of questions going here, I'll try to anwer some:

RMA = Return Material Authorization (that's the process of returning a defective product to the vendor for exchange or credit)

Antec cases and power supplies are very good. The 350W supply would be OK for all but a very high end machine. However, if you're going to use one of the high end video cards with an auxilliary power connector, you might want to consider a 400W or bigger power supply - those cards use a bunch of power.

As for MB brands, everyone has their favorites. To some extent, it depends what's most important to you: price?, features?, cool colors?, good tech support?, overclocking? Let us know what's most important to you, and you should get some good advice.

Personally, I look for good value and excellent stability at stock speeds. Overclocking and lots of onboard features don't matter to me. Some of my favorite brands are Soltek, Shuttle, and Albatron.

[munkeyboy123]

ok well thanks on the rma info, um i was thinking about getting a 400+ psu cuz i will be using a good graphics card. im not into overclocking and bells and whitles and crap, i dont care if the motherboard is bright pink with butterflys on it i just want a very stable and dependable motherboard i dont care what brand but i need it at a good price preforably less than $200 including the processor with it. but i know i can find what im looking for under 200 but i dont know if there any good and i can make it with only 1 8x agp and only 3pci i dont need a whole lot of pci's.