Socket 754 Boards

Reviews can't seem to give a straight answer. I'm looking for a budget board to put a Athlon 64 3000+ onto. So far, I'm thinking of:

ASUS K8V
Gigabyte GAK8VT800-Pro
Gigabyte GAK8VT800
MSI NEO-FSR
AOpen AK86-L
AOpen AK89-L

Always been a fan of the NVidia chipset, but it can't seem to keep up with the 64. True?

i was going for budget as well, and went with the msi neo. i am very happy with it's performance and ease of use, so far only one minor issue; which was getting an SATA HD to be recognized as the c: drive, while also have a PATA drive for data. i had to install some sata drivers at the beginning of the xp install to smooth things out.

i was going for budget as well, and went with the msi neo. i am very happy with it's performance and ease of use, so far only one minor issue; which was getting an SATA HD to be recognized as the c: drive, while also have a PATA drive for data. i had to install some sata drivers at the beginning of the xp install to smooth things out.

Um, I wouldn't call that a problem. You always need to load SATA drivers to get XP to recognize the drive when installing. The problem is, no mobo makers are smart enough to include the disk you need to boot with.

Abit KV8 is another good one. The nForce3 250 will be on boards very soon. The performance doesn't seem to be worth waiting on tho, IMO.

Um, I wouldn't call that a problem. You always need to load SATA drivers to get XP to recognize the drive when installing. The problem is, no mobo makers are smart enough to include the disk you need to boot with.

i never said it was a problem. it was (as i said) an "issue"; meaning it took me a while to get things up and running (through no fault of msi). and msi actually did include the necessary drivers on the cd that comes with the mobo.

Its not a mobo issue though its windows xp's issue of being designed b4 sata was so it doesn't auto load drivers for SATA. idk which is a good board to put the chip on, but i have heard the new nvidia chip is supposed to be out in like a month. AMD is switching sockets I think in a month too, Im not sure if its just the FX that is switching or if it is going to be the regular 64 as well. You might want to look into it ;)

Its not a mobo issue though its windows xp's issue of being designed b4 sata was so it doesn't auto load drivers for SATA. idk which is a good board to put the chip on, but i have heard the new nvidia chip is supposed to be out in like a month. AMD is switching sockets I think in a month too, Im not sure if its just the FX that is switching or if it is going to be the regular 64 as well. You might want to look into it ;)

I assume you mean to 960. That's already out...FX and Opteron only come in Socket 960, Athlons are 754.

I think u mean 940, I am talking about the socket 939. Its kinda weird how amd is releasing this shit, I have a funny feeling its going to hurt them in sales. I'm not sure what the logic is behind producing so many different board designs like this?
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040318/index.html
edit: I think it might be that socket 939 is going to be the non ecc board, whereas 940 is the ecc board ;)

Are you guys going with a stock fan for the AMD 64s?

no, i got one from coolermaster, one of the quiet ones.