Which motherboard should I chose for a new system? What would be the good and the bad?

ABIT IP35 Pro ?

ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP ?

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 ?

or something else, preferably less than $300 on a motherboard?

It seems I have come to the end of the internet on research on these boards and still can not decide which one to get. I am building a system to replace a Pentium III 800 mhz, so I am sure anything will seem wonderful compared to it. I would like to have a system with all the possibilities of future expansion, all the possible connections for the unforseen possibilities of the future, and a good board that a newbie like me, can become a new overclocker and not something I will have to spend hours trying to figure out if the board is DOA or needs some minor change to make it work?

I plan on using 2 GB 6400c4 of corsair ram, a 8800 GTS 320mb Video Card, a 500 GB Seagate HD (for video processing), and a stata dvd burner. I would like to have a faster computer with some longevity and to not walk in to buy a game in the next year and realize that my computer can not handle it.

Thanks for any help, much appreciated!!

I have only used gigabyte and asus.

Asus was the cream of the crop for mobos,it has some of the nicest features and great overclocking, but I have noticed alot of RMAs on their mobos and gfx cards. Plus after an RMA from hell witht them I wouldn't recommend Asus.

Gigabyte is going to cost less than your asus boards. It wont have some features like the onboard wireless. If wireless is something you need an onboard solution is nice to have. I oc my 939 rig on a gigabyte mobo and it is very stable. I would recommend the gagabyte

I have recently upgraded from Pentium 3/MX 4400 to Q6600/8800 GTX OC2. You'd expect a wonderful change indeed, between the $1500 machine of 6 years ago and the $3000 machine of last month. Well, here's how it turned out for me:
- in older games like Diablo 2 there's no noticeable difference
- when ripping a DVD or CD the speed is the same - given by the drive
- when compressing with winrar or some audio/video the new PC is about 10 times faster. It would have been 60 times faster but the cores stay around 16% use because the hard disk bottlenecks the system. I'll probably need to use RAID to improve this.
- the real diffference is in newer games, that refused to install on the old system
- an older game that used to work OK on P3/Windows 2000 now reboots the system on Q6600/XP, about once in 4 attempts to start it. If it starts it works. Probably XP's fault, I don't know...
- watching movies is now a pleasure, very smooth. Of course, an overclocked GTX is a bit excessive for that.

I think a GA-P35-DS3R is a good choice for your motherboard. Q6600 is the only intelligent choice for a long-term solution these days.

Edit:

I lied about Diablo 2. There is a difference, I can now enable shadows. Too bad the shadow is sometimes drawn between the source of light and the character

Get a good PSU, for example Corsair 620HX. That will handle your current system without any trouble, and it has room for upgrades too.

I have no personal experience with Asus, but have also noticed what seems a high number of problems (to be taken with a sack of salt).
I've used Abit boards, and have had minor issues. Nothing major, but my thought now is why buy Abit when there is Gigabyte?
I like my current Gigabyte mobo, a GA-G33M-DS2R. It's a micro; the GA-P35-DS3R would be similar in a full ATX (minus the onboard video I'm not using anyway and the firewire).
I've also bought and used 3 BioStar mobos within the past year, and they've all been good too.

Erh, you need two coins or a dice to decide not a coin.

Personally I can't help you much as I haven't used any high end MB. But I have used all three brand's budget boards and ASUS is the worst, don't have any problem with the other twos (maybe others have different experience).

Due to the lack of 'help me' posts and the fact that I run two of them in both AMD & Intel flavours, I would vote for the IP 35 Pro.

I definately recommend the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R. I (unfortunately) got a ASUS P5K Deluxe, and it died on me within 3 days. Sure, it has alot of features, but 1/2 of them I will never use, plus, there have been alot of RMA's with that board. I used to love ASUS, but not anymore.

Gigabyte boards seem to be solid and reliable.

I haven't used an IP 35 Pro but I read some reviews and it looks very good. Arrell, why don't you read a few reviews and decide for yourself.

http://www.techspot.com/article/61 [...] d-roundup/
http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 685,00.asp
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/m [...] tinum.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/m [...] -ds3r.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/m [...] 5-pro.html

Thanks aevm for the links to the reviews! These reviews are great. The issues with them is that they don't tell you much about the things the board is missing that you should be looking for or the company behind the board. I guess what I was also looking for was what people had been running into as far as getting a mobo that wasn't DOA or getting technical help from the company or just having boards that seem to have a good reputation. Newegg has some great reviews, but I am not so sure how well weighted the reviews are when there are so few and people are more often to complain rather than praise.

Well, of course. Let me see, I bought about 20 DVDs from Amazon this year, one was not working, guess how many reviews I posted at Amazon. One, and ugly too, of course

From what I noticed on this forum:
- some people like Asus, some hate it. I think those who hate it are more numerous, but I didn't count.
- Gigabyte seems a bit more popular, but there are horror stories there too. GA-P35-DQ6 is often involved.
- aBit is very rarely mentioned

Are you looking for anything special, for example RAID, FireWire, wireless, support for two video cards? For example Gigabyte has boards of all sorts and you have to navigate through a lot of junk to figure out which model you need. I'm sure that's true for all in fact.

I am using an abit aw9-MAX and I love it. As far as the company, I had to call abit cause I couldnt not get Windows to install on my SATA HD from my SATA DVD drive he sat on the phone with me for an hour till we figured it out. I'll admit that portion was dissapointing in that I needed an hour long call, but tech was great, went over some of the board features etc while we waited for machine to cycle. YMMV

P3 noHT/ATI 9800 -> E6600 / 8800GTX was huge for me. Are there places where I didnt get the gains I wanted? Sure. Were those expectaions and desires based on facts or kid like wonder at the bigger numbers? A bit of both. All in all I spent ~1500 and I love my computer. Been running fine for 8 months now, hopefully it shall continue.

I would recommend the ABIT. I have never in my life had a bad ABIT board. Though the Gigabyte is a very close second. Then ASUS comming in third unless you need that wireless capability.

Best,

3Ball

I have the P35C-DS3R really happy with that mobo. I don't know about the other on your list never try. but just one advise, stay with recommended ram for the manufacturers more easy too work with. I don't know if you want to go sli but if it's yes go for the evga 680I with the option you need, raid etc etc etc.I have one and for me that's work better then the P35C-DS3R. Just my opinion and now it's price lower then when I got mine. Ttiger direct have it for 159 to 279 depends on your needs.
thanks

Abit and Gigabyte have always worked great for me. To bad I can not say that about Asus. I do like some of there stuff. I never buy from Asus anymore do to the fact that they are more expensive. There Tech Support is ok. Gigabyte makes solid motherboards, and I can say the same about Abit.

I remember my first build. The first game I played on it was Dune 2. Didn't want to stretch it too much

Which of those boards is best value for money?

Jive: I see you have a pair of raptors in RAID 0. How noisy is that?

I recommend Asus AFTER you read a ton of reviews on a specific board. Like all motherboards, sometimes you get some annoying flaws so you have to check the revision # and nose around on Google... I like to get rev. 2 on any given board, they really get to clean up any probs. My A8N-E is rev. 2, the rev. 1's had bad chipset fans that were noisy and prone to failure... You'd never know, research is key. Also heard Gigabyte is good too, and also that Foxconn makes most of this stuff for these guys anyway.