   Could you recommend a Socket 478 Motherboard?
  Hi all,   your input and experience would be appreciated here!*Another* MSI motherboard died - this one lasted from 9th Oct 2003 - 9th Jun 2006.  It replaced a previous MSI that lasted just over a year.  So I've given MSI the benefit of the doubt, but not this time.875P Neo-FIS2R - R.I.P.At home I like to develop games (but often end up just working from home instead of my side projects!), and play something now and again - but right now I don't want to upgrade.  I want to replace.  So I want a Socket 478 board so I can use the CPU (should it still be working) and the other bits I've got in there.    It needs to have SATA, USB2, at least a couple of PCI slots, and an AGP slot.  Really cannot afford a full upgrade to different CPU etc right now.I have a legit Windows 2003 Server licence that came with Visual Studio 2003 EE work got me that I would like to use.I was thinking about getting this:Asus P4V800D-X 478 DDR400 8x AGP & PCI-EX SATA Raid LAN - but having read a little in the support forums about it, Windows 2003 Server has been reported to not like the LAN stuff on board a similar asus board.Does anyone have any decent experience with a socket 478 motherboard with Windows 2003 Server?  In which case could you please post about it?Thanks,Paul   
  MSI makes absolute garbage. I've never seen so many faulty motherboards and video cards.Asus, outside of their reliance on crappy vendors like Marvell, produces a solid set of boards. If it comes down to an Asus board versus anything else, go with the Asus board every time.   ;  I'm with sir Ravuya. Asus is the way.I know a few mates who has the ASUS P4GPL-X and one who has P4P800-(something) which just works..   ;  I did like the spec of the Asus one, that whole agp + pci express thing is pretty cool - even if it is a 16x pcie size slot which can only go 4x.A local computer shop has a asrock board, but for £49.  After shipping is said and done that's not much more then the Asus one.  I'm leaning towards the Asus still, but is Asrock a good brand?   ;  I ♥ ASUS. I'm probably biased, but they're definitely my preference for motherboards.   ;  Go with Asus. I've never had a single defect or failure with their motherboards, and I've done some pretty ungodly things to them, including running one with no northbridge fan for several hours under load (until I noticed the fan wasn't spinning).I've also never had any trouble with their LAN chipsets and Win2k3, although it's worth mentioning that I've only used their AMD boards, so I don't know if the Intel chipsets are different enough to cause problems.   ;Quote:Original post by paulecoyoteI'm leaning towards the Asus still, but is Asrock a good brand?No, Asrock is a lowcost brand. You get what you pay for. If you pay too much for a Asrock board then you've been ripped off..   ;  I sell computers all the time (my company) and for my first ever self built machine which was for myself, I tried to go cheap and get the cheapest parts for myself including a cheap £20 motherboard (socket 478), it broke within a year (capicators blew).since then I stock them still under warning (it is hard to compete with other indies that just sell these, so I say i do not recommend, but they work, and if you need a cheaper board... e.t.c) however my main product now are the intel motherboards, I recommend for you a D865GBF, it basically has best of everything, internal graphics with agp upgrade optional. it is standard ddr, they do have ddr2 models, however I do not know your setup, and the highest 478 pentium is a 800mhz, so 400ddr is about the best performance you can hope for.I think the intel motherboards are UBER reliable! I have sold over 300 now, and only had 1 faulty (which i think was my fault :@ ), I use them also in my dedicated servers (not enough workload to require xeon or propor server)and have had uptimes of over 6 months, only restarting for updates / a serious power cut when ups ran out :~(sorry if I am being confusing here!also, if you are talking about win 2003, surly if it came with VS,  it is only for development purposes and not for production use? I am not really sure, I am just following msdn rules here, but it sounds like you have a diffrent package!   ;Quote:Original post by wilhilalso, if you are talking about win 2003, surly if it came with VS,  it is only for development purposes and not for production use? I am not really sure, I am just following msdn rules here, but it sounds like you have a diffrent package!The Visual Studio licence allows me to install the server where ever I like for development purposes.  I develop stuff on my desktop machine at home. *shrugs*.  I'm not using it for any commerical purpose apart from development.  It spends most of it's time basically being a desktop.  They actually *DO* want me to be able to install the CD and use it, right?If I had £100 handy I would buy myself an XP Pro licence, but as this properly licenced server was hanging around unused I installed that.  It was duel booting with Windows 2000.  I installed 2K3 so I could use the latest DirectX SDKs etc.Anyways, sounds like a big shout for Asus.  Thanks a lot   ;  If you want something inexpensive, Epox is a pretty good low-cost brand. I did have a problem with faulty capacitors on one motherboard I got from them, but they replaced the mobo without much (trouble beyond the week it took me to get the replacement after I sent the bad one in). The replacement hasn't given any problems at all and shows no sign of faulty capacitors.   