How long before a motherboard release is stable?

[essential]

I was just wondering, cause I am sure many of you have seen motherboards and chipsets come and go. I am the kind of guy who buys older technology when it's finally stabilized. I am building a new machine soon, and after reading what many on this forum have to say, i'm compelled to wait for the nForce4 s939 boards.

I have waited so long to build a new machine, I don't want to wait another day, heh. So my questions is, the nForce4 comes out October 15th I believe. How long till you think stable nForce4 boards will be out? If they are out by November, do you think it would be Dec/Jan/Feb before boards are out with stable bios revisions with the kinks worked out and such?

Thanks.

 

[TimTheEnchanter25]

I'm in the same situation as you. I was all set to buy a new machine around the first HL2 release date. When it got delayed, I decided to delay my plans too. My 4 year old computer is starting to show its age and I can't stand waiting any longer. But, I really think that being able to have a PCI-E video card (for future upgrading) is worth a little more waiting.

From what I've been reading, Nvidia is going to announce around the 20th that Nforce4 really exsists. A couple of the mobo manufacturers have hinted that they will get their boards in stores in November.

Personally, I'm not even going to think about possible stability problems. As soon as NewEgg has an ABIT Fatal1ty mobo in stock, I'm placing my order. Hopefully, everything goes smoothly. But, if not I have faith that ABIT will take care of any problems.

It is also reassuring that other than adding PCI-E, there really isn't any major changes between NF3 and NF4. So, it might even end up being an improvement over NF3.

 

[CraigRT]

I think stable NForce4 boards will be no problem right away.
I have had early generation boards in a lot of cases, and never really had any significant problems with any of them, except for a first generation i845pe board. but I just stay away from Intel now so I don't have to worry about that anymore

everything else has been OK out of the box.... with the only thing i can think of recently being my onboard LAN does not want to work on my new Soltek board, but I don't know what the problem is, if it's chipset, or the LAN controller itself.. but the board works flawlessly otherwise, so I just dismiss the problem and use a PCI NIC.