Best non-Via Socket A mobo for AMD TBird 900?

[MobySlick]

I have an AMD Thunderbird 900 on a crappy ECS motherboard using the Via KT133 chipset. I have so many problems because of the AMD+Via+AGP issue, and there's no solution for my board. It sucks. I would like some recommendations as to the best motherboard I could get, price regardless, that does NOT have a Via chipset, or at least not a 686A or 686B southbridge.

What I'm really interested in are the nVidia nForce boards that are supposed to be coming out this fall. But I want a decent motherboard to use until a good, stable, feature-rich nForce board comes out. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

I think the only chipsets that are currently available without a VIA southbridge are ALi chipset boards. I can't recommend any personally since I have not purchased or used any of them. VIA has a really large presence in the Socket A platform, so you will have to do a little more looking for a solution without VIA on it.

 

[MisterPants]

Another
option
to
consider
is
the
Via
KT266
chipset
which
does
not
use
those
problematic
southbridges.
The
Shuttle
AK-31
has
gotten
excellent
scores
in
reviews.

I
apologize
for
the
broken
form
of
this
post...ie
seems
a
bit
off.

 

[Coligeon]

Yeah, I did what MisterPants said, but I got the Msi K7T266Pror motherboard, looks great. Here are some reviews of the motherboard, Hothardware.com, Planetsavage and Pchardware.ro have reviews of this motherboard, 2 of those sites gave it their Editor's choice award. So I ordered Mine Today at Mwave.com for 142 Dollars. Got Raid Agppro, 3 dim, comes with all kinds of accessaries like, Pc2pc, just like networking, unique to Msi though, comes with the cables to do that, also come with floppy cable and harddrive cable of coarse, so it has many features. ANother one that is ok is the D led, has to do with Trobleshooting, where it shows different colors. Anyway, I can't want to get it. Another motherboard chip you could consider is the Amd760, it is also DDR though, it you make it out like you don't want to go DDR, so you will most likely have to have some part of Via. The KT133A chip is great for PC133 ram. Have fun ^_^.