Opinions on these motherboards?

[Guertin Graphics Art Department]

Well,
With luck, I'll finally be ordering parts for the big upgrade this week.
I'm having a hard time coming to a decision on motherboards though.
I'll be going with a P4 3.0 or 3.06, was going to wait for prescott,
but haven't seen much in the way of good reactions to them so far, and
can't afford to wait any longer.
I've more or less narrowed the field to:
Chaintech 9CJS
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
Albatron PX865PE PRO II
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe

The Chaintech is my first choice, I've seen a lot of good press
about it, but not much real world experiences. The MSI is second for
now. I would really like a good onboard sound set up, like the Via Envy
PT 24 that the Chaintech and Albatron have.
I don't plan to overclock (I may experiment with it a bit, but I'm
more interested in stability) and I'll be using it for multitrack
recording and computer graphics with Photoshop and that sort of thing.
The rest of the time will be gaming and DVDs (hence the desire for good
onboard sound. I will be getting a special soundcard for recording, and
I don't want to have to also get an add on soundcard for gaming, etc.)
So... Any thoughts?
I'll be putting in 1 gig of memory too, so suggestions for that
would be helpful as well.
Thanks

 

[Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)]

Well,
With luck, I'll finally be ordering parts for the big upgrade this week.
I'm having a hard time coming to a decision on motherboards though.
I'll be going with a P4 3.0 or 3.06, was going to wait for prescott,
but haven't seen much in the way of good reactions to them so far, and
can't afford to wait any longer.
I've more or less narrowed the field to:
Chaintech 9CJS
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
Albatron PX865PE PRO II
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe

The Chaintech is my first choice, I've seen a lot of good press
about it, but not much real world experiences. The MSI is second for
now. I would really like a good onboard sound set up, like the Via Envy
PT 24 that the Chaintech and Albatron have.
I don't plan to overclock (I may experiment with it a bit, but I'm
more interested in stability) and I'll be using it for multitrack
recording and computer graphics with Photoshop and that sort of thing.
The rest of the time will be gaming and DVDs (hence the desire for good
onboard sound. I will be getting a special soundcard for recording, and
I don't want to have to also get an add on soundcard for gaming, etc.)
So... Any thoughts?
I'll be putting in 1 gig of memory too, so suggestions for that
would be helpful as well.
Thanks

I've had experience with the MSI 865 Neo FIS2R and the Asus P4P800 Deluxe,
which are similar boards to what you have listed by those manufacturers. Of
those two, installation went smoother on the Asus, but neither board won
out as a better board of the two. I trust Asus much higher than any other
brand.

Never pay too much attention to reviews. There were reviews featuring
sweeping praise of the overclocking abilities of my current board, a
Gigabyte GA-8IRXP, when it was release. It won quite a few motherboard
shootouts online. The biggest praise was its overclocking abilities. Only
problem was this board suffered from a manual overvoltage reboot problem.
Anytime you set the vcore manually, it had reboot problems. You didn't even
have to change the vcore, only select 'manual' for the vcore voltage
adjustment. I don't remember the specifics of it, as that was over a year
ago, but I'm sure you can google for it. Now, if it overclocked so well
(and quite a few online reviews were very positive for this aspect of it),
you'd think they had to bump up the vcore and they'd get the reboot
problem. Gigabyte eventually fixed the problem, some 7 BIOS releases later,
but they restricted the vcore to 1.75 volts, down from the advertised 1.85
volts that people bought the board for.

If you would have bought that board based on the reviews, you might have
gotten pretty disappointed.



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
1:27pm up 7 days 4:02, 2 users, load average: 0.43, 0.17, 0.05

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...

 

[Eternally]

Well,
With luck, I'll finally be ordering parts for the big upgrade this week.
I'm having a hard time coming to a decision on motherboards though.
I'll be going with a P4 3.0 or 3.06, was going to wait for prescott,
but haven't seen much in the way of good reactions to them so far, and
can't afford to wait any longer.
I've more or less narrowed the field to:
Chaintech 9CJS
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
Albatron PX865PE PRO II
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe

The Chaintech is my first choice, I've seen a lot of good press
about it, but not much real world experiences. The MSI is second for
now. I would really like a good onboard sound set up, like the Via Envy
PT 24 that the Chaintech and Albatron have.
I don't plan to overclock (I may experiment with it a bit, but I'm
more interested in stability) and I'll be using it for multitrack
recording and computer graphics with Photoshop and that sort of thing.
The rest of the time will be gaming and DVDs (hence the desire for good
onboard sound. I will be getting a special soundcard for recording, and
I don't want to have to also get an add on soundcard for gaming, etc.)
So... Any thoughts?
I'll be putting in 1 gig of memory too, so suggestions for that
would be helpful as well.
Thanks

If you haven't already, go to newegg.com and go to each motherboard and read
all the user reviews. There you can sometimes get over 100 opinions from
real world users for each board.

 

[Guertin Graphics Art Department]

I have done that actually, that's part of the problem. Lots of vague "it
sucks" vs "It's great", but mostly "it's great" because New Egg takes
out the worst ones (or they say they do anyway).
Like I said, the Chaintech is my first choice, but the opinions I'm
getting on it are all over the place. ALl the press has been very good,
award winning etc, then I'm reading people saying all chaintech is junk,
it won't work, memory problems etc. Of course, I hear essentially the
same thing about the other boards too. I don't want to get stuck with a
lemon. This is my first try at this and I'm not likely to be able to
diagnose the problem if I put it together and it doesn't work.

 

[Hackworth]

message I have done that actually, that's part of the problem. Lots of vague "it sucks"
vs "It's great", but mostly "it's great" because New Egg takes out the worst
ones (or they say they do anyway). Like I said, the Chaintech is my first choice,
but the opinions I'm getting on it are all over the place.

<snip>

Which goes to show you that consistent quality is a key determining factor
when selecting a motherboard. Heck, even a Amptron/PC-Chips has "good"
motherboards if the one you get works. The ones that do work out of the box
(which of course most do) are usually hassle-free and utterly reliable, and
can be a real bargain depending on your needs. When I need to assemble a
high-end system, I almost always go for the Asus; even they're not perfect,
but I trust them to produce quality boards much more consistently than I do
any other board manufacturer.