Is the MSI-6309 a good reliable motherboard?

[Cougar]

I'm considering getting this motherboard to put in a system that I'm building for a friend but I don't know if it's a good motherboard. I'm more likely going to order the motherboard and processor from multiwave and they seem to have a decent price on this board so will I regret buying it? Or for that matter will I regret buying any motherboard based on the Via Apollo Pro chipset? I've dealt with Via based motherboards before and I know that they can be a royal pain in the butt to get working properly so I'm still not quite sure if I want to give them a shot again. I'm trying to build this system as cheaply as possible without sacrificing quality so I can't afford to buy the best of the best motherboards here. This is what is getting installed into the system:

Voodoo 3 (still a slight chance of being a TNT2-Pro)
Aureal Vortex 2 Superquad
128mb Kingston PC133 CAS3 Ram
Netgear 10/100 nic
Pentium 3 (preferrably FC-PGA, but unsure of speed at this moment)

So what's the verdict guys (and gals)? Will this setup be a problem with a Via based motherboard or should I ask my friend to spend just a little bit more money so he can get a board based on the 815E chipset?

This has nothing to do with my topic, but man does it suck that onvia doesn't have free shipping anymore. I was going to get the case and monitor from them but now I have to get them somewhere else......sheesh. Oh well...what can ya do?

 

[LXi]

Very nice board, not a lot of features though, but very stable and reliable. If you can spend more for more features, get MSI 815E Pro.

 

[Cougar]

LXi...

Thanks for the quick response. I don't really think that he cares to much about the features of the motherboard. He's in college now so this system will be used for Mp3's, homework, surfing, a little bit of gaming, and burning CD's. He won't be overclocking his sytem, and I doubt that he'll be upgrading it for a while. Would it still be worth it for him to spend the extra money on an 815e board considering what he'll be doing with the system? The MSI-6337 only costs $22 more so it's not like it's alot of money but still every little bit I can save him will help.

Also, would you or anyone else out there know of a place that will sell me win98 without charging me an arm and a leg?

 

[LXi]

Then the 6309 will do fine.

 

[robg1701]

I know what your asking about, but as you dont state anything to the opposite, i will go off on a tangent....what about considering the AMD ?

You state that your after a decent priced system, your talking about reliability, so why not get a Athlon (or even Duron is probably more suitable considering the target and desired performance) together with one of the MSI boards - great bang for the buck and stability as well.

Just my thoughts, if he's stone cold against AMD then forget what ive said, its just that you didnt say anything to the contrary.

 

[Cougar]

robg1701...

Well I asked him which way he wanted to go and he said Intel all the way, so I guess that's the way it's gonna be. I was looking to get an 815e based board but since this system is already costing more that I figured I thought about getting a Via 694x board to cut some costs a little bit. I guess I'll give the 6309 a shot and if I have problems with it I can send it back for a different one.

 

[robg1701]

Ok, well i can accept that. Dont like or understand it, but i can live with it
Oh, on a side note, Anandtech is running mainly off 1GHz T-Birds on MSI K7t Pro's, so at least they like it. That comforts me, hehehe

 

[hans007]

i've had two of these. Great motherboard. The Ac97 codec sound is even good (well in win2k, win98 it sucks). Rock solid board, took my p3-550e fcpga up to 809 at only 1.6 volts. Rock solid. it also has excellent memory performance for a via 133a board , if you leave it on spd enabled. Oddly on that board, tweaking the memory performance from the autodetect spd setting makes it slower.