Recommendation for motherboard?

[garbledwords]

I am planning on purchasing an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor soon. I want to get a motherboard (Socket 754) for overclocking. Based on what I have researched, it appears that the best MB chipsets for this are the NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb and the VIA K8T800 Pro.

I had initially decided on the MSI K8N Neo Platinum but I am some what leery of it now due to all of the problems being mentioned on their forum site. Some of these problems look like could be due to the nForce3 chipset itself and thus other MBs could have the same problem.

I am looking for MB feedback and recommendations that address two aspects of my MD selection.

1) Which chip set, nForce3 250Gb or K8T800 Pro, is more reliable, more stable and has the fewest problems.

2) Which manufacture makes the most reliable, most stable, and fewest problems MBs. Part of this decision is the support available. (One of the things that I like about MSI is that they have a very active forum providing good help.)

Thanks


Roy

 

[orangat]

I would go for the Nvidia chipset instead of VIA. I really dislike VIA for all the niggly problems I faced in the K6 and Athlon days. I didn't hear any serious issues about the NF3.

The NeoPlat did have problems but I think BIOS fixes and possibly even a mb revision is out which should fix problems.

 

[CraigRT]

I honestly think I like the K8T800 more, cause I've always loved VIA, but I haven't had any problems with my NF2 board at home... so Id consider an NF3 250 as well.

to be honest, I'd get either of them, it comes down to cost, and features on the board (and obviously a reputable name)

There are many good ones out there, so need not worry, just wait for a few more opinions.

 

[imported_Flux]

As far as overclocking is concerned, the NF3 250GB should give you less problems.
Outside of that, I'd say that the chipsets themselves are equally stable.

If you get a VIA based board, I'd go with Abit all the way.
You'll probably get the most stable/highest overclocking VIA based baord from them.

For the NF3 I'd go either MSI or Asus.

The MSI K8N Neo Platinum boards have been hit and miss.
Some have problems some don't.
As said above, bios revisions and/or motherboard revisions may have already fix their problems.

The Asus K8N-E hasn't had any major problems outside of overclocking.
They seem to hit a limit at 220MHz HyperTransport. (akin to FSB)
This is a problem that will no doubt be fixed with bios/motherboard revisions.

 

[orangat]

The NF3 chipset has better performance than VIA.

VIA has issues like pci/agp locks (which is supposed to be resolved by the pro version). And knowing VIA, I'm not sure if they finally ironed out pci issues which plagued The AthlonXP days.

If you have to go VIA, at least get the pro version.

 

[GryphonKlaw]

I think the Nforce3 250 is the way to go right now. After reading a whole bunch of articles and benchmarks, the 250gb came up on top. I didn't like the lack of feature in the previous nforce motherboards. I have 4 harddrives and 2 optical drives and those boards had no place for all of it. But then again, I only at a few of them.