[haxz0rman]

i would recomend asus for its quality, but i have just started to use a few msi things recently, (graphics and motherboards) and they really seem to perform good, but i guess you should go for which ever one is the better deal.

[markjaycups]

thanks for all the posts guys

i think i'm gonna go for the MSI, when i get my next paycheck....

[_Taz_]

anyone had any experience with the SOYO brand? I see Tiger direct has a barebones system KV7ME for $19.00 after rebates (ends today) or the same barebones with AMD XP2400 and 256 Ram for $139.00

[Cloud Strife]

Well do you plan on overclocking or not?

If you do, I would either pick up a Abit NF7-S or a DFI Ultra Infinity. The Infinity seems to be the king ATM due to high VDIMM adjusments up to 3.1v. The NF7-S only goes up to 2.9v.

There are currently several individuals making third party BIOS's for these boards with tremendous success. The third party BIOS makers have made it where the NF7-S can compete with the Infinity.

But if you are on a tight budget, I would seriously consider looking at the Shuttle Nforce 2 Ultra. It is under 60 dollars at Newegg.com and can overclock a small amount. But if you apply volt mods to this board it can easily compete with any other board out there.

[Cloud Strife]

anyone had any experience with the SOYO brand? I see Tiger direct has a barebones system KV7ME for $19.00 after rebates (ends today) or the same barebones with AMD XP2400 and 256 Ram for $139.00

Tigerdirect is a very bad company to buy from. They do a lot of bait and switch schemes.

[markjaycups]

i've bought a lot of stuff from tigerdirect, they have decent prices (most of the time) but yeah, they definitely do bait and switch. their service is awful as well....newegg is far better. their service is wonderful and their prices are great.

i've got a follow up question here....turns out my motherboard has AGP 4X, not 2X. with my 512mb PC2100, Athlon XP 1800+, and geforceFX 5700 ultra, why can i still not run games at very high detail and get a decent framerate? i turned the AGP aperture in the BIOS up to 128mb, but it didn't seem to do anything (not that i was expecting it to).

is my processor/ram combination too slow? or is it the AGP 4X? or am i just expecting too much out of my system?

BTW, my current mobo is a shuttle AK31, version 2.