I am going to be building my own computer pretty soon.. and am a little unsure as to what to look for in a motherboard.. i know i am going to use a Athlon 64x2 3800+ chip.. so i know its gotta be a 939 mobo but as far as features on it, i am lost.. other than the usual # pci slots/ agp vs pci express/ on board audio/ etc.. is there anything else i should make sure i have?? im not looking to do anything special with this computer.. im not an overclocker or anything like that.. im a part time gamer (and i do mean part time) but mostly gonna be graphic/video editing.. i just want a decent mobo that isnt gonna break me.. i was looking at these.. any good??

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128315
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157081
thanks for the help in advance..

IMHO Forget Both - Gigabyte make for Sh#tty Overclockers and I think their as reliable as a pre 1940's russian built car that runs on Kero. Not to sure on the ASRock though.
If you want to Overclock and FutureProof - DFI Lanparty SLI
If you want Rock Solid Stability and Performance without the need to tinker - MSI Neo 4 SLI
Dont waste a nice chip like the 3800

ok..well i dont plan on overclocking or anything.. i just want to get a decent board that has what i need on it..

Even if you don't plan on overclocking, the motherboard can defanatlly effect performance, and the good boards tend to be overclocker friendly, reguardless of wheather you are going to overclock or not. Personally I like the abit fatality boards but that a bit more than the boards you are looking at, lol.

Yo-

I think that you have chosen two good 'value' boards-

You will find that Gigabyte gives very good support and sells a lot of boards-and at $84 shipped-is a very good bargain IMO

I just did a recent search for a video card - and it was very clear that the PCI experss cards are available like 50 to 1 vs the AGP cards-

I would say that the Gigabyte board is more future proof than the ASRock board and an overall better buy IMO-

Suggest a minimum of 2gb RAM for good performance and atleast a nvidia 6600GT video card-

Good luck-

Mike

I can highly recomend the Abit AN8-SLI motherboard. I have had no problems at all with the board and it supports the dual core processor, if you choose to run it at sometime. The features of the board are:

- Two PCI Express X16 slots for Video
- Two PCI Express X1 slots for expantion
- Two Standard PCI slots for expantion
- Onboard 5 channel sound
- Four Sata2 interfaces
- Gigabit ethernet
- Two IDE ATA133 connectors
- Floppy Drive Connector
- 7 USB 2.0 ports
- 2 Firewire 1394 ports
- Support for Socket 939 processors (including dual core)
- DDR-400 memory interface, up to 4Gb
- Nvidia4 Chipset with hardware firewall

So far I have been very happy with my system(see my signature). If you are looking at overclocking this board makes it very easy with the GURU BIOS interface, no jumpers to set.

take a look at the 939 boards from Epox as well...good features and quality for decent prices: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...d&InnerCata=22

ok..thanks for all the help.. i guess i just dont really understand what makes a mobo a GOOD mobo.. they all seem to have the same features.. so what makes 1 beter than the next?

here are some things that differentiate motherboards...

chipset being used (Via, Nvidia, SiS, ULi, etc.)

build quality (quality of capacitors, additional passive heatsinks, active versus passive cooling of main chipset, etc.)

layout (SATA & IDE port locations, RAM slot locations, ability to accomodate 3rd party CPU coolers, CMOS reset jumper, etc.)

features (firewire, sli, #of USB headers, error reporting LEDs, etc. and on and on)

BIOS and its control over features/settings (Award vs Phoenix BIOS, voltage and frequency adjustments, etc.)

tech support (from company and from 3rd party enthusiast community)