Buying a motherboard is not unlike the same procedure for a complete computer. As the PC market expanded, the best advice for shopping was to determine the USES that the buyer is going to have for the computer, and then seek out the best compromise between a superior match to the requirement and the amount of financial resources to devote to it. The WinTel systems eventually became so dominant that almost any set of requirements could be met by one or another of the very wide range of WinTel systems available.
The expansion of the ownership of PC's has been such that the gap in expense between the cost of a "basic" PC and the most powerful of WinTel types is now comparatively small, and the "basic" system is now vastly more powerful than required by some 80-90% of uses we put our PC's to. Gigabyte is an interesting motherboard manufacturer, offering a broader range of variations than most producers, and keeping their older designs available in the retail channel over longer marketing periods than is the more usual for the industry.
I personally have three Gigabyte MB's, and have been getting excellent service from them. All three of mine are from a now more or less obsolete standard, as all have Socket A processors from AMD. Two have the same three year old Via Technologies Chipset, one is just a few months newer than the other. The newest is a year old, with an nVidia NF2 Ultra 400 Chipset.
There are tens of thousands of computer hobbyists building their own computers and swapping information on the internet. Two magazines with a large following are serving the DIY market, and popular web sites such as AnandTech join them publishing detailed reviews of PC components such as motherboards. It is quite easy to use a search engine such as Google to locate far more descriptive material about motherboards than any one person could keep track of.
It's out there. I can't summarize everything for you. No one could.
:disgust:
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