Hi i'm building a new comp and am wondering what the best mobo brand is, my friends tell me Asus is best but you have much more exp, also planning to overclock AMD XP 2500 on it and getting a radeon 9800 pro eventually so very upgradeable =)

The chipset is the main thing that makes a mobo fast or stable. Currently there is not really a perfect choice for amd since the best chipset is the nforce2 but its still somewhat buggy. The mobo makers can't be held accountable for that.

Chipsets aside, every mobo maker has good and bad boards. Asus is generally held in highest esteem but that may be because they have good support and packaged extras. Over the last 12 months there has been a rotation on which nforce2 mobo is the best, and the winner at any point in time is a company with one of the newest boards, that coincidentally has had the least time to show its failings. Of all the boards out right now, the dfi lanparty nforce2 ultra400 is the best and the abit nf7-s is next. I am not aware of one high performance amd mobo that is more stable than the others. Almost everyone who wants the best is buying nforce2, but the manufacturer varies according to user preference.

asus a7n is probably good

I personally would go for an Asus motherboard. I had 3 Asus motherboard in the past and I had zero problems with them. Recently, I overclocked my Athlon Tbird 1.33Ghz to 1.50Ghz using an Asus A7V motherboard. At 1.5Ghz, the system is still stable, I only need to increase my Vcore to 1.8v and thats all I need. Extra 0.05v. Asus board is good due to it's superior stability and overclock ability. My A7V is KT133, which does not support 133Mhz FSB, KT133A does support 133Mhz FSB. I'm running at 130Mhz FSB now, I'm sure other KT133 motherboard cannot do the same. If Nforce 2 motherboard are buggy, you can always look for an alternative option, like VIA KTxxx series or even look at the Sis. Sis improved alot ever since the Pentium 4 came out.

Choosing a motherboard takes more research and work than picking processors. There are more talks about AMD and Intel procs but less about chipsets. The chipsets are similar to vice Presidents of a company, they are as important as the President (the CPU). The rules and procedures governing what the Vice Prsidents could do and could not do are defined in the BIOS.

While the chipsets control and govern the PCI, memory, video and audio features and flow rate, the BIOS sets the rules. It's just like your car could travel over 90 mph, but the cop says you would only go below 65 mph. The cop is the BIOS.

Personally, I stay with board makers that take non-conservative approach, have good R/D and relationship with both AMD, Intel and Chipset makers like SIS, Intel, VIA and Nvidia. Nvidia is new to making chipset. Its' stock price goes up many folds due to this approach.

My 1st choice are Asus and Abit, 2nd MSI,Gigabyte,Aopen.

Everything except GIGABYTE

heard lots of probs bout nf2 boards, but am happy with performance and bios features of my epox 8rda+.they are constantly updating bioses and making their presence felt by responding to tech/support issues on varios forums(such as nforcershq). only 3 problems so far- will NOT run with win 98 (se or not), raid(or sata for that matter) and no n/bridge fan.o/c's well with all adjustments being independant of each other if desired.