Hey, I am looking into buying a motherboard for my P4 and I have heard that brand name is not that important. I am looking in to buying a SIS645DX North Bridge and 961/962 South Bridge. The motherboard is made by matsonic. i know that this company is not that brand name but my friend got this motherboard for his computer and he overclocked his CPU (1.7Ghz @ 2.26Ghz) so that is why i thought this would be a very good choice. Lemme know. Is chipset important or motherboard brand. I am quite impressed with this motherboard.

Yes!, go with Brand name on a mother board because it control & make work's everything you got in it ,cpu ,video card , pci etc...so it is the most important piece in your computer. Because if you buy some cheep board like ECS you could have stability problemm or hardware problemm etc..

ECS is not that bad.. I think it's not what motherboard you use. It's either Intel or AMD... usually AMD makes stuff unstable and not the motherboard. That's my opinion, my 2 cent.

Yep. ECS (Elite Group) mobo's arean't bad at all they're just more picky than other mobo's when it comes to components such as the PSU and RAM. You just have to make sure these two components are spot on and you shouldn't have problems.

The first board i buy was ECS & on 2 games the sound was bad (like not fast enought)but more on the game GP3 (Grand Prix3) so i said to myself maybe my sound card SB128 so i tryed the inboard sound same thing so i said to myself (again) maybe a defect on the board could happen on ANY BOARD so i went back to the store and exchange it for another one the same board ECS got home reformat the HD reinstalling Windows , drivers etc... & then GP3 well the same f---ed problemm & yes i tryed everything in the Cmos Default setting , optimum , my own setup nothing work always a bad sound throught my SB128 or the inboard sound so i was piss ,when back to the store & put some extras cash & bought a Gigabyte board (266)never had any problemms with it sofware or games , now my sister got the board & i bought myself another Gigabyte board (333 mhz KT400) & still no problemms NONE. So yes Brand name are better I know Gigabyte are not on top like Asus but they cost less to.

Forgot the ECS was all in one & you could put S-dram or DDR memory.