what do i need to consider when picking a MOBO>?

[MANIMAL]

I am partial to ASUS and I use AMD processors. Its time again for an upgrade and I havent been in the market for 3 years...all this PCI-e and SLI stuff - point me in the right direction while I continue to hunt for a 9800pro 256MB or better vid card

thanks

[ITDEFX]

i would say check for how much ram is can support.. mine can do 4 gigs... really can't wait til vista so mobo makers can release 64 mb boards :P but then to think about it, either they are going to have to start packing more on these chips (4 gigs or more on a chip) or they are going to have to make smaller but powerful chips.. the size of these chips have remained the same for years, time to go smaller.

[redgopher]

SLI really isn't that important right now unless you have money to burn. I'd go with a PCI-e nForce 4 board (MSI is awesome).

[mbstuff]

There are AMD boards coming to market now that can do both AGP and PCI-E. I'm buying one of these soon - http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524 - because I have an AGP Nvidia 6800 that I don't want to upgrade at the moment, but I need to upgrade from my p4 2.4GHz. I think it's a good choice for a motherboard for those looking to hold on to their AGP video cards for a little while longer.

[mbstuff]

I don't know for absolute certain, but I assume the onboard sound can be disabled. I've never heard of a motherboard where that can't be done, with at most a changed jumper setting.

And it's a socket 939 AMD board, for the most recent Athlon 64 chips, and it has M2 slots for future Athlon cpus that haven't been released yet.

I'm holding out to see other motherboards with the same chipsets (ULi M1695- http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2489&p=1), to do see some comparative reviews before I buy.

[ITDEFX]

yes its either by jumper or on the bios settings...funny thing is when i got this board last year thats the first thing i disabled, I pulled my 5 year old sb live card and reenabled the onboard sound since i was just using a headset instead of a speaker set.

I don't know for absolute certain, but I assume the onboard sound can be disabled. I've never heard of a motherboard where that can't be done, with at most a changed jumper setting.

And it's a socket 939 AMD board, for the most recent Athlon 64 chips, and it has M2 slots for future Athlon cpus that haven't been released yet.

I'm holding out to see other motherboards with the same chipsets (ULi M1695- http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2489&p=1), to do see some comparative reviews before I buy.

[Vegan]

SLI really isn't that important right now unless you have money to burn. I'd go with a PCI-e nForce 4 board (MSI is awesome).

I agree, let SLI mature just a bit longer. Not only do you have to upgrade your motherboard and buy another videocard for SLI, you have to buy a $200+ power supply.