recommend a good athlon DDR board?

[red-i]

building a system for a co-worker (athlon XP based of course!) and would like some suggestions on a good (not expensive) ddr board. dont' need raid, onboard Lan is always a good option to have. I've got an ecs k7s5a board so haven't been payin close attention to the latest DDR boards out there now. above all it has to be a stable board.

it'll have the following in it:

XP 2000+ (most likely)
512 pc2100 DDR (or possibly pc2700 in case he wants to upgrade to a 333fsb XP processor down the road)
80gig WD 8meg hard drive
ati 7500 or 9000 vid card
5.1 sb live value (they're cheap now! and good cards)

also, vid card recommendations are always welcomed too! dont' wanna go above $100 cdn as the guy's not gonna be doing much gaming, though he'll prolly wanna play a few now and then.

[Deputy]

I like my Soyo Dragon Mobo.

I just built a unit with an ASUS MB. I have built several with them with never a problem. DDR 2700 from Cruical. Also got the video card (Radon 8500 LE with 128 ddr ) from them and it is the second one that I have gotten and love it. I have bought several sticks of RAM from Cruical adn I always get great delviery (free) usually the next day.
Hope this helps.

[shaneincottondale]

I was Asus man for years till I found Gigabyte. All three of my systems at home now run this brand. The best board I've found for DDR Athlon lovin is the Gigabyte 7VAX. It supports 333 and AGP 8X (not that any games do, but oh well). You can check their wares out here . As for video card, look for a Visiontek or Leadtek Geforce 4 MX 440. You should be able to get those around the price you want.



shane
:crooked:

[red-i]

what about ati's value line compared with geforce 4 mx 440?

also, regarding the motherboard I think i'm gonna go with
ASUS A7V8X-WL-1394 KT400 DDR AGP8X USB2 SOUND LAN IEEE1394

since the guy wants firewire so I might as well get it onboard (though I'll recommend he use a SB live over the onboard audio)

[rhyno]

I'll second the Gigabyte recommendation. Just built a P4 2.4Ghz system w/512M PC2700, 533Mhz FSB. Zero problems, installation was pain free (although the dumb case required me to insert 10 separate pins for the front USB connectors ), and there is a ton of great utilities on the accompanying CD, including a software overclocker :crooked: -- have yet to try that.