Most stable MB?

[MisterDuck]

There's plenty of emphasis on speed in regards to current motherboards, but what would you consider to be the most "stable" motherboard (or chipset) for both Athlon and P4 processors?

Any thoughts on the stability of the Via, Nforce, and SiS chipsets?

 

[Oyeve]

IMO, Intel made mobos are very stable. Not good or OC'ing but super stable.

 

[idcandy]

I own an ASUS A7M266 and have found great stability and reliability with it. Anyone I've talked to about Asus also swears by their stability. They use the AMD 761 chipset. BTW, I'm very interested in seeing how the A7M266-D dual XP processor machine does.

- idcandy

 

[BS911]

I've owned many motherboards; mostly Asus boards, some Intel, some Abit but so far the most stable of them all has been my Epox 8KHA+! I purchased the Epox board because of all the good reviews and comments it had received and I haven't been dissapointed!

I'm running a Athlon XP 1800+ overclocked to 1650 Mhz with a 143mhz FSB and it is purring like a kitten! 🙂

BS911

 

[Jen]

most stable for me in AMD has been Epox 8K7A and also this Abit KG7 which i got for a friend



Jen

 

[Pabster]

You mention VIA and Stability in the same sentence. Bad idea 😀

IMHO, the most stable P4 chipset is SiS 645. Why not i850 or i845/845-D? Because of the PCI issues which have only recently seen the light of day. And perhaps the incompatibility with certain (older) AGP graphics adapters.

For Socket A (Athlon), I'd have to give the nod to AMD 762/766. SiS 735 is certainly a contender as well. (AMD761 is certainly a choice also, unfortunately, good luck finding a board that pairs 761 with 766. They all use VIA's 686B.)

As for VIA's efforts in either camp ... I'd avoid them like the plague. YMMV.

 

[ahsia]

Look, there are a lot of stable motherboards, even with VIA chipsets. I currently own three PCs with VIA chipsets, and they all run great, with the exception of my EPoX 8KTA3+, which always takes me a while longer to get it working the way I want to. You are going to get a lot of people with a lot of different motherboards. If you are more specific, then you'll probably get a more specific response.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< You mention VIA and Stability in the same sentence. Bad idea 😀

IMHO, the most stable P4 chipset is SiS 645. Why not i850 or i845/845-D? Because of the PCI issues which have only recently seen the light of day. And perhaps the incompatibility with certain (older) AGP graphics adapters.

For Socket A (Athlon), I'd have to give the nod to AMD 762/766. SiS 735 is certainly a contender as well. (AMD761 is certainly a choice also, unfortunately, good luck finding a board that pairs 761 with 766. They all use VIA's 686B.)

As for VIA's efforts in either camp ... I'd avoid them like the plague. YMMV. >>


i have an asus a7v133 and it has given me nothing but trouble. it doesnt reboot, period. you have to shut down and then power back on. if you try to reboot, it will shutdown, then the screen will stay black, and you have to cut the power via the psu, and when you turn it back on, it gives you a warning about your fsb being wrong (its not, it does this regardless, even @ 90fsb, cpu underclocked.) and it locks up all the time in windows. good thing i use linux mostly, its rock solid under linux.

the thing that sucks about 761 boards like pabster says, is that they all use the 686b southbridge, which is the southbridge from hell. really sucks. my next system will be an nforce 420 (or something similar, i might not upgrade for a while), if its not stable, then matrox+intel, here i come!!!!

 

[rockhard]

For me at present is the Gigabyte GA7VTXH 🙂
As long as you dont expect to push your rig further than the sum of the parts you should not have any instability probs with most motherboards.
Ive currently got a soft spot for Gigabytes reputation for stability. YMMV though 😉

 

[LXi]

The key to stability is the motherboard manufacturer, not the chipset. Outstanding manufacturers can make stable motherboards with any chipsets thrown at them. Decent manufacturers can get stability out of most chipsets. While some company don't know the word stability at all. For what it's worth, at the AMD front, companies like MSI and Epox have always made ultra-reliable solutions. For Intel, Asus, Intel and MSI have always shown that they can make solid motherboards for Pentiums. Smaller players like Shuttle and Iwill also demonstrated their ability to produce quality motherboards. Basically, you're unlikely to go wrong with almost all the brands mentioned here in my post.