motherboards, which is better?

[Newbie programmer]

which of these is better and why?

number 1
http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_i...fo=1&PRID=5681

number 2
http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_i...fo=1&PRID=4880

[penagate]

Number 2. It's more colourful.

And on a more serious note, the first one has too many wacky expansion slots, whereas the second one has normal PCI slots.

Other than that, not much difference, I'd say Gigabyte is a better known brand.

[thegreatone]

The first board is really interesting, it still gives you AGP 8x and PCI-E x16 all in one go, and does support SATA and RAID... I'd say that is a great board, BUT, its not a well known brand, i'd tell oyu to furthur research it and find out any stability problems etc.

Gigabyte boards are more well known however, and that particular one is decent, it doesn't offer the extensions the other one does but may well be the better of the two in the end.

Once again, its a case of research.

[si_the_geek]

I have a GigaByte board (my 2nd), which seems to be a newer version of the one you posted (even tho I bought mine nearly a year ago!), as mine is nForce4 instead of nForce3.

I can highly recommend them, as they have good features and reliability - a couple of things I like are the colour coding (of virtually everything), and the extra memory slots so you can add extra RAM later (rather than replace what you have). For mine at least, the extra memory slots are actually run by a different controller - so the speed of one set does not affect the speed of the other.

[Newbie programmer]

how about this one??

http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_i...fo=1&PRID=4886

[Newbie programmer]

then there's this one

http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_i...fo=1&PRID=5654

[si_the_geek]

Both of those look good to me, the second is the one I have!

One thing to note is that Norton Internet Security is a full version, but only valid for 6 months (I think it's 6), after that you need to pay for an subscription or upgrade.