Do NOT get any of the P4Sxxx series of boards. The S means it has an SIS
chipset. Very bad. You may not know that SIS stands for "Stability Is
Secondary."

--
DaveW



"Prime" wrote in message
om...
First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS
P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs
of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video
card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term
is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped
to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my
old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it
seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards.

So I want to upgrade my motherboard.

I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will
stick with them. At my local store they have...

ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe)
ASUS P4S800
ASUS P4S533MX

Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real
differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others.
Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well
(like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware
(CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on)
as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using
Windows XP.

I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board
might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I
have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is
hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority.

Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to
worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would
something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might
not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for
my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other
than the above that I should consider?

Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed
decision

Cheers,
Mike