Motherboard recomendations?

[snidy]

I'm going to build a new system, what is the best motherboard now or coming out soon?
Mainly a high end gaming system, cost doesn't matter.
I'll put an AMD XP 2800 or higher on it.

 

[buffbison]

Heres a good motherboard,

http://www.directron.com/kt4ultrasr.html

can look at their prices for the 2800+'s

 

[paparazi]

Either one of the new Nforce 2 or Via's KT400 chipset equipt motherboards.
From Asus, Abit, MSI, Soyo, Gigabyte, Soltek.
Look for the fully loaded models that commonly come with:
USB2, Firewire, 10/100 or even gigabte lan, 6 channel digital audi, all have 8X AGP, not all are raid, some have serial ATA/raid, several have flash card readers ie Soyo KT400 Dragon ultra (which has a front break out panel) several come with flash card headers on the board.
It is worth a note* in the spring? the new socket A CPU's will appear which will require a differant socket all together, so buying a motherboard now may leave you with little upgrade potential but then to be honest we all end up swopping out motherboard/ram and CPU when we upgrade anyway. Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[paparazi]

Not sure about the Nforce 2 models but they are reported to be very slightly quicker than the KT400 boards, not much in it though.
KT400 boards to look at:
Asus A7V8X
MSI KT4 ultra SR
Abit AT7 max2
Soyo KT400 Dragon ultra
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP

Nforce 2's
Asus A7N8X
MSI KN4
Abit NF7S
Not too familiar with these though.
Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.