Hi Peter,

working for a distributor, we deal with several
lines of main boards daily.  I have listed them
in the order of my personal preferences.  Except
for the Intel line, we have boards by the other makers
that do both AMD and Intel CPU's

Intel (p4 only), Asrock , Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte. (currently)

The AsRock line is a good line of inexpensive boards.
I sell hundereds of them a week to dealers throughtout NE,
and see a lot less of them come back over the counter to RMA
than we did when we carried PC Chips/ECS boards as a "cheap" board.

AsRock is originally an offshoot of Asus.  Kind of like the Chevrolet
division compared to the cadillac division in GM. They have great features,
very reasonable pricing, and decent quality. I have personally built many
systems using them and they work well.  The only potential drawback is that
they are
1yr warrranty, as opposed to the other brands, with a 2 or 3 year warranty.

But then again, you pay less for them.

Thanks and have a Great Day!

Joe Lore

================================
I seem to have lost touch! There used to be articles comparing motherboards
so as to make a decision. Now I find that Anandtech and others seem to have
a lot of reviews of individual boards, but not a comparison to narrow down
the search. My need is for a stable, good performing, desktop system. I
don't want to pay top dollar for the "latest and greatest", but am willing
to pay for good quality that performs well.

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