[markjaycups]

hey, i'm not quite sure this is where i should be posting this, but it seemed to be the best place in my mind. i just recently bought a geforceFX 5700 Ultra (to replace my geforce3 Ti 200, which served me well for 2 years) and my motherboard only has AGP 2x. i believe this is my bottleneck, since playing splinter cell and other games i can't turn the graphics up all the way without massive framerate loss, which should not happen with this card(it's got 128mb DDR2 - good for 14.4 GB/sec bandwidth). i have a good summer job now, but my budget is still a little tight. i was wondering what the best motherboard would be for around $100 (US) or less. my system is:

AMD AthlonXP 1800+
512mb PC2100
GeforceFX 5700 Ultra
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
Maxtor 40GB 7200rpm

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

-mark

[jonevans]

i would go for an Asus board or maybe an MSi

Asus boards tend to be a higher quality than most but i am sure you will get lots of responses here with everybody's personal preferences

[killer043]

I agree get an asus thats your best deal I've been trying to build a new computer exept I have $1000 to spend

[OsirisX]

I would say Asus, but with a buget intel might just be a better deal if you just like a stable board.

[markjaycups]

any specific models you guys can think of? also, is chaintech a decent brand? the mobo i have now is a shuttle and i have not had a single problem with it, aside from the chipset fan crapping out(easy $11 fix). i found a shuttle with AGP 8x, nividia nforce2 ultra 400 chipset, onboard everything for $55, a chaintech with the same for $50, and an MSI for $62. is it worth the extra $12 to go with the MSI?

[Michaels]

i bought ASUS A7N8X-X over the weekend, the installation was a lot easier than i thought. a simple board with 5x pci 1x agp, 6x usb 2.2, audio and nic onboard.

the x models of ASUS is a standard board but yet with most of everything you expect from ASUS

i paid 71 Euro here which i thick will be somewhere around 75 to 78 dollars

[SamTranter]

Asus, speaks for itself

[hydraulx]

Chaintech is very decent, but i still prefer asus or abit

[jonevans]

i would say the extra $12 is worth it for the MSi - but as you have seen here, most people agree about the quality of Asus

then again, you have had few problems with your shuttle so you may not see the reasoning behind peoples recommendations

however, good luck with whatever you decide

[Michaels]

whenever we have bad mainboard we should not asume all board made by a particular manufacture are bad. i have used different boards but had problem with Epox, to my judgement that will not make all epox board bad

standard and high quality board cannot be compared. and each could be bad at any given time