Considering motherboard options ...

I am upgrading my mb ... since this $65 MSI PT880 board has proven itself (surprise!) to be a $65 board.

I am looking at a few boards ... my price limit is around $160.

Here are a few I am considering:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=241567

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=240119

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=240120

I am leaning toward the Chaintech because it seems to have a lot of features ... and it has the VIA Envy PT24 chipset, which is comparable to an Audigy.

Well, I went ahead and bought the Chaintech.

It has a lot more features, received rave reviews, and has better onboard audio. A recent spate of issues with my Audigy 2 and gaming have made me consider onboard audio a viable option for the first time.

Take a look at the Chaintech motherboard here:

http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/p...o=13&PISNo=144

Nice accessories! I was gonna buy a Nforce2 chaintech board just to get that darn Digidoc at one time :)

Nice board!

According to UPS, my board is in Dallas right now ... can't wait to install this thing.

I have only two worries about it:

1) There is ONE CENTIMETER of space between the Northbridge chipset cooler and the AGP slot. We'll see how that works out with my Arctic Cooling heatsink and the RAMsinks on my 9700 Pro. The Arctic Cooling system has a hefty plastic bracket on the back (next to the Northbridge). It's going to be close.

2) If a video card is fastwrites-capable, they are enabled in the BIOS, with no option to disable them. I believe I can still shut them down in my Catalyst drivers.

New board tentatively up and running. Onboard sound seems awesome! It's OC'd slightly to 3.45 gHz right now (It's a 3.2). System seems stable. Running Aquamark okay, have not been in-game yet.

... 19,526 (with high quality DirectX settings).

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8107455

and ... 19,743 (with high performance DirectX settings).

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8107480