mother boards

[dpaulj]

we are looking to buy a new computer, and are now leaning toward having one built. (after reading some responses to my previous question). A couple of the companies are recommending ASUS mother boards, specifically the P4PE/L DDR333, Audio, LAN. They say that Dell, HP, Sony all use inferior MB's. Does this truly make a difference, and justify the additional expense? We intend to put our current analog video's and VHS tapes on DVD, so we are looking at the sony combo drive that is both +/-.Is this worth the additional expense, or are we being sold a bill of goods? Looking at the ATI all in wonder 9700 pro vs. the 8500 w/64 mb, or the ASUS NVidia 9480 TVD 128mb. I am soo confused.

[Budfred]

I can't do much to alleviate your confusion, I get confused by the stuff too...:)

I can tell you that a lot of those companies actually use Asus boards, but they also tend to cripple them. My HP has an Asus, but they have disabled the temperature monitoring and probably a number of other functions I don't even know about.

The biggest advantage to Asus boards is that they have really good manuals and decent support. They generally seem to run well also and are usually pushing the limits of the tech... Overall the word around here has been generally positive for them, but there are other good boards out there too... I would avoid PCChips and ECS if you want a high end system, but I have even used ECS without any real trouble...

Others with more knowledge will come....

[dpaulj]

thanks for the reply. Everyone seems to have a better mouse trap. Most of the machines, HP, Compaq, Sony won't even list who makes their MB's. Gateway and Dell use Intel Mother Boards, but apparently there are many levels of these also, from middle of the road, to nearly high end.

[saphalline]

Originally posted by dpaulj
Gateway and Dell use Intel Mother Boards, but apparently there are many levels of these alsoGateway and Dell use mobo's with Intel chipsets, which is different from mobo's made by Intel. Mostly they're made by Intel because Intel can custom-design the crippled mobo's for use in a pre-built system (Intel owns PCB manufacturing plants), but occasionally if they need an extra bad one they'll go to another manufacturer. Once you start building your own PC's, the ones made by big-name OEM's like Gateway and Dell start to lose their charm. They're proprietary, cramped, overheated, underpowered, unbalanced, and entirely non-upgradeable piles of junk! I would never buy one for personal use, but for someone else I may recommend one - under certain extreme conditions.

Looking at the ATI all in wonder 9700 pro vs. the 8500 w/64 mb, or the ASUS NVidia 9480 TVD 128mb.Do you have price quotes for these? They all have varying degrees of power and usefulness, but it's hard to compare them without prices. ;)

The 8500 isn't bad, but unless it's a DV or all-in-wonder version, it probably won't do what you want. The Asus 9480 would definitely be a good one, but it can't compare to the all-in-wonder 9700 Pro, so the Asus would have to be much cheaper in order to recommend it (like at least $100 cheaper).