Which LGA775 Motherboard?

Intel® Desktop Board D915PBL
DFI LANPARTY UT (i915P)
MSI 915P Combo
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum
ABIT AG8

The Intel one is cheap and it comes with DDR2 (Only : ))
While the LANPARTY UT one is great for case mod
The MSI ones seems stable with loadsa features
And AG8 seems good (from comments)

I am building this for my cousin (not planning to overclock)

Probably any of those will be good if you aren't overclocking. I just put a new rig together with the Abit AG8 and I like it a lot so far. You need to decide if you want DDR or DDR2 RAM. A couple more choices would be the Asus P5GD1 (DDR) or Asus P5GD2 Deluxe (DDR2).

I was checkin' out this board for my new system:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-136-148&depa=0

Mainly because I'm not finding a whole lot of options for decent PCI express video cards. The only things I see from ATI are a lot of x300/600 cards and some VERY expensive x800's. Same from Nvidia, 57xx/59xx PCI express cards but no reasonable 6800's. If someone can point out something otherwise I would love to check it out. The reason I was picking up a canterwood based board because I've been told the NB stays a bit cooler than on the springdale boards...again I would stand corrected if this is an incorrect assumption. The springdale boards are so much cheaper I may go with an AS8 since I have heard nothing but good things about it and at $109...

The other problem I have is that there have been some nasty rumours floating around about 915/925 boards being defective, I know it's horrible to base a decision off of rumours but I know the canterwood based boards are tried and true.

Anyways just my input, would love to hear what other people have to say about 775 based systems since I am just moving to mine.

tsin

I have not heard of "defective" i915/i925 mobos, but I do know not all of them have the O/C lock figured out. Also, the PCI-E can't be completely locked yet either. Asus and Abit would be my only two choices with i915/i925. That DFI mobo you linked to looks interesting, but I know nothing about it. I do know that the i915/i925 power circuity is a lot better than i865/i875 chipsets.

Well I ended up going with an Asus PCI-E x800 pro card so I am going to use a gigabyte 915 board. Ironically I opened the box and saw that there was an AGP slot on it... o well!

I think that AGP slot runs off the PCI bus, so it will not have the full performance of a true AGP slot. You are better off with the PCI-E card.

If someone can point out something otherwise I would love to check it out.

Click to expand...

Don't count out the newly released gforce 6600 cards. I haven't seen too much info but they have 8 pipes versus the 6800 16 and only 128mb of ddr3 memory. The good news is they are right around $200.00US.

That's what I understood if after reading the manual, not only that they explicitly said that using an AGP card in that slot will "reduce the life of the video card..." ??? Lol wtf...who in their right mind would put their 350+ dollar card in that? The only video cards that are supported are last generation as well.

I think I did the right thing going with the PCI-E card and 915i combo...as far as I can see the only PCI-E cards available now are budget minded or top end and the budget one's don't have enough power for the games I play and plan on in the near future.

You could always get this GigaByte board As it has PCI-e x16 and x1 as well as an AGP slot and PCI. It also has DDR and DDR2 that way you can upgrade alittle at a time.

That is the exact board I got, I wouldn't put my $400 AGP card in that slot...read the manual and what they say about the slot

As far as I am concerned it's just a wasted PCI slot, I don't know though if you could run an AGP card in that slot along with a PCI-E card. That might be kind of cool to run a nice 2d card there for your second monitor.