Best gaming Motherboard?

[rocket_sauce]

I am relying once again on the genius' of these forums. You guys confuse the he!! out of me and I am not that stupid. I am saying this because I have read thru these forums and cannot decide what the best gaming MB would be.
What I am looking to do:
1. Play the latest games (Half-Life 2 for example)
2. Get the best MB that supports AMD64 (939 or 940 or 754?)
I can get PCI-E later.
3. Able to be overclocked
4. Save money for a Kick-a$$ video card

Would like to wait for the new boards, but as time goes by it is getting more difficult. Need to upgrade...

Thanks!

 

[snotling]

You should be looking for the socket 939 type. No current MB has PCI-E for AMD CPUs. Nforce 4 will fill that void, boards are (expected) to be available soon.

What makes a good Gaming Board? support for the latest vid cards(you got that with PCI-E), good sound (on board sound is much better than it used to be a few years back)

Other considerations:

Gigabit Ethernet for private lan parties if you can afford the gigabit hub/switch as well.

if you go to lan parties, a small form factor can be interesting like micro ATX.

some software bundles include games.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by snotling on 11/05/04 02:24 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[ChipDeath]

Even when Nforce4 boards do get here, you'll be paying a price premium just because they're new, <i>plus</i> the boards won't be 'proven' like many boards are now. PCI-E simply doesn't really have an inherent advantage at the moment - even AGP 8X is not really being fully exploited by the top cards (it's only a meagre couple of % faster than AGP4x with the absolute top-end cards), so it's not being a bottleneck.

I would just get a nice nforce3 250Gb board, like the MSI K8N Neo2. I've seen a number of people say that Gigabyte make a better board for overclocking, but the nutter who was running a FX-55 @ ~3.8Ghz (!) was using the MSI (albeit heavily modified), so it can't be <i>that</i> bad..

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen

 

[rocket_sauce]

Will this board work for me? MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset. I don't do the LAN party stuff and just now got into broadband, so I don't know if this is overkill for me or not. What I do with it will determine I guess:

Broadband gaming
Work from home using AutoCAD (going through my companys server)

These 2 things will be the most intensive stuff I will use this computer for. On board audio isn't important as I bought the SB Audigy 2 ZS package (btw, is that a good sound card?). I am now thinking I don't need that because of of what Snotling said about on-board being better now. So, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[snotling]

Your Audigy is still much better than integrated audio.

With NF3 you get the integrated firewall, a good thing to have when using broadband.

now get out there and enjoy it!

 

[rocket_sauce]

thanks for your help snotling!!!

Sorry Chipdeath thanks for your help too!!!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Rocket_Sauce on 11/08/04 05:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>