Which i850 board?

[Domain]

I've been somewhat removed from upgraditis, but it has recently hit me again, and I desperatly need to retire my old PII400/440BX. Unfortunately, I haven't had time, nor want to keep up with the changes in the past few years, and particularly the quality of brands available.

So, I'm hoping someone could share some advice/opinions on i850/478 mPGA motherboards. Currently i've been looking at two particular boards, the Intel 850MV (Audio/No Lan), or the Asus P4T-E (No Audio/ No Lan).

Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with either of these boards? Or other brands/models you would recommend? I'm not concerned about overclocking (or negligible performance differences), just a rock solid board, that will hopefully provide me with a decent capacity for future upgrades.

I appreciate any information you can provide,

Domain

 

[Bingo13]

Both are very good boards. The Asus is the better board if you want to overclock and so far has been as stable as my D850MD/MV boards. If you are not into overclocking I would highly suggest the D850MVL with audio and lan. The audio and lan solution are both very good and if you do not need the extra PCI slots a D850MDL board works great in a smaller case.

 

[Mark0999]

Another board to consider is the Abit TH7II.

In a different direction...

There are the SiS645 boards, which support DDR ram....

http://www.ecsusa.com/p4s5a.cfm

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/645ultra.htm

I have the ECS P4S5A board, and it's been very solid. If it was a primary system for me I probably would've paid the extra $$$ for the MSI 645Ultra and PC2700 DDR.

Asus also has a board, but I am not sure it's on the streets yet...

http://usa.asus.com/mb/socket478/p4s333/overview.htm#

 

[Shide1]

The intel boards are rock solid.

 

[Domain]

I appreciate all the replies,

I'm leaning toward the Asus P4T-E, after looking over the documentation, configurability, etc. I've been using Intel boards for about 6 years, without a hitch, but I got a chance to play around with a D850GB, and it seemed to have quite a few problems (could have just been bad luck though).

I'm not big on onboard components, LAN would be acceptable, but onboard audio is useless to me, since i'll be running a SB Audigy. Unfortunately, it seems 98% of all the i850 boards have onboard audio, but I guess it can always be disabled.

Anyway, I'm going to do a little more research before I decide. Once again I appreicate the responses/suggestions.

Domain

 

[FiveDoubleO]

ive been researching this too

if your looking for a rock solid board id buy the Intel board
my 2nd choice would be Asus

 

[damocles]

Get the Asus P4T-E. I don't believe that the Intel board could be any more stable, and I have yet to see proof otherwise. The P4T-E doesn't have lan- but does have better O/C options and is probably slightly faster

The TH7 II is very feature packed and has great O/C options- but it would be a step down in terms of reliability IMO.