I presume that you're referring to a Socket 939 A64. (The other choice would
be Socket 754, which can give slightly less expensive system. Socket 754
seems to be "being phased out", but there are still lots of mainboards on
the market.)
If you don't want SLI, there may not be much point in getting a PCI-E
mainboard at this time. AGP is still in the mainstream, and I've read
nothing that indicates that first-generation PCI-E graphics cards offer
performance advantages over AGP.
I suggest that you not worry about obsolescence, as it's unavoidable, but
rather aim for performance and reliability.
My current machine uses an Asus A8V Deluxe mainboard. It's AGP, with 5 PCI
slots. (I'm using an Audigy 2 sound card, even though the board has
multichannnel onboard audio. The onboard gigabit NIC is adequate to use with
my 4 Mb/s cable modem connection.) If you buy one of these, Revision 2 is
supposed to be better, although the differences may never be obvious if you
don't overclock. I have my A8V Rev 2 for quite a while - about 6 months.
If you want PCI-E graphics but not SLI, there's the A8V-E, which uses the
newer K8T890 chipset. (It has only 3 PCI slots, plus two PCI-E X1 slots.
Cards for the latter don't seem to be common yet.)
If you wish to get overwhelmed, go to
www.newegg.com. Search for AMD
mainboards using Socket 939. I imagine that the boards with the highest
performance at the moment use the nVidia nForce 4 chipsets. The vanilla
nForce 4 doesn't support SLI. Abit and Microstar have favorable reputations,
and DFI is becoming popular with overclockers. I like Asus, but they don't
appear to have a non-SLI nForce 4 board.
Good luck.
Bob Knowlden
Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
