hey, i looked at both and one thing i liked was that the ASUS had wireless lan already on it, and other than that both motherboards are pretty much the same to me what do you think its going with Corsair Value Select Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 and an athlon 64 3500+

gigabyte - http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...128-254&depa=0

asus - http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...131-499&depa=1

the gigabyte has the nforce 3 chipset but i hear the asus chipset isnt bad either

I have used a Gigabyte motherboard as well as an Asus and I just overall like Asus better. No specific reason, really, I just feel it's more feature rich and more reliable for me.

Sounds good! Im saving like 50$ getting the ASUS anyway lol. Some people said they had trouble installing Windows XP with it. Do you know anything about that happening?

Oh also, how will I know if my RAM is compatible with the ASUS motherboard? This is the RAM http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-450&depa=0

--nevermind
the motherboard says RAM: 4x DIMM for Dual-Channel DDR400/333/266 Max 4GB
the ram is DDR400(PC3200), 184 Pin DDR SDRAM so i think thats ok


I was going to get the one with the activity lights because I thought it had better preformance, until I realized basically for the extra 50$ your just getting lights.. And whats this about the Memtests and stuff and 6-3-3-2 and stuff like that, i'm a RAM noob

I have older Asus boards and they still to this day are very stable. I have an Asus P2B-F, P2B, P3B-F, and C34vx (not sure of this one its my dads board) The only issue we have ever had with an Asus is the P3B-F (since replaced with a new P3B-F) got left on during a lightning storm, Power supply got taged, Bought a new one, turned out to be faulty and the bad power supply blew up the board. Other then that my dad and I swear by Asus won't buy anything but Asus.

Cool, that makes me feel better on picking ASUS (I knew they were a good company anyway). The one I'm getting has onboard wireless LAN so that means all i have to do is get a wireless router, configure the internet setup and im set; at least i think thats what it means lol. I could hard-wire the motherboard to the modem also right?

Personally, I think I'd go with ASUS.

I've got a Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394 board. I like it okay enough, but I have some gripes with it. For starters, it's got jumpers for setting the mulitplier and FSB speed. In this day and age, that's a little funky, IMHO. There's not a CMOS jumper on it-- you have to pull the battery on it to clear the BIOS settings. And finally, it doesn't adhere to AMD spec for the processor socket-- I've got a Swiftech MCX-462V CPU cooler on my Barton 2500, and I had to nudge over a capacitor to ensure a proper fit. The board performs well enough, and it has plenty of features (serial ATA RAID, firewire, USB2.0, 6-channel sound, supports DDR400, up to XP 3200+ chip), but it's those little things that irk you when you're working inside of your case.

The last ASUS board I owned I LOVED. It was an A7V-133C. That board was a WORKHORSE. I had it paired with 512MB PC133, and an Athlon 1.4Ghz t-bird. That thing was my first box I was ever completely happy with, I didn't cut corners anywhere with it. I ended up selling it, and it's still running perfectly, last I heard. If their current boards are anything like that board, I'd definitely go with an ASUS. Matter of fact, I think that the next box I build will be based off of an ASUS board...