I checked the asus A7N8X deluxe, which uses the combination of SPP and MCP-T, asus is the most notorious mainboard company there is so you cannot go wrong with them I think. MCP I believe is when the chipset(nforce2) has integrated sound, MCP-T must be a level higher than MCP but I do not know what it means exactly. I know that MCP-T is the northbridge which gives you features like ddr400, serial ata, and SPP is the southbridge giving you integrated sound, agp8x and usb 2.0. the northbridge and the southbridge together are the two parts of the chipset. much like the earth is divised in two hemisphere(now this is just me talking).
It has plenty of things like 6 channel audio, 2 lan ports, agp8x, dual channel for ddr400(pc3200) (this means you have to use memory in pair to benefit the potential speed, so it is better to have 2 sticks of 256mb instead of having one of 512mb) it has serial ata (relative to hard drives, ata133 means that the hard drive can potentially transfer data at a rate of 133mb/s, serial ata would be 150mb/s), serial ata I believe is in relation with raid caopability, and I believe that raid is more of a security feature than a performance feature, although I might be wriong on that. But, I used ata66 a long time (66mb/s, also called udma mode 4) and then "upgraded" to ata100(100mb/s or udma mode 5, all you need really is a cable that is able to benefit the larger bandwith, which is provided with each and every retail mainboard you buy)and I did not see any change in performance, keep in mind that this is only a potential limit of transfer of 100mb/s and that it does not transfer at this rate most of the time. it also has 2 firewire IEEE1394 ports, which is like usb 1.1 but faster(used to plug a mouse, a keyboard, or more cleverly used to plug an external cd or dvd drive, usb is faster than a serial port which is what keyboard used to use, but it doesn'T change anything if you plug in a keyboard or a mouse, your mosue wont be faster, its irrelevant but is relevant if you use like i said external drives like cd, dvd, hard drive, etc.) it has 6 usb 2.0 ports, which is even faster than firewire, I believe it is 40 times faster(450mb/s I think than usb 1.1 (4 ports on the back panel, and headers for two other ports for a total of 6) it also has asus' own cpu overheating protection, which is good to have knowing that heating and amd are good friends
there is a table for ddr400 support so I suggest that you buy memory indicated on this table to be sure it will be compatible with the board, if you use ddr333 or lower I believe you can use any brands but not for ddr400, this issue is common for a lot of mainboards
asus makes the A7N8X deluxe and the A7N8X with the nforce2 chipset, the deluxe one has obviously more features, performance is the same between the two.
those boards are also ready to use the athlon xp 2800+ (@333 fsb) thoroughbred , updating the bios will probably give you
the ability to use the newer cpus like the 3000+.
as for the 128-bit controller, that is dual-channel ddr. If it works the same way as a fsb, 128 bit can be related to the number of lanes on a highway, a highway that would contain 128 lanes would permit twice as much cars to pass at any given time than a highway with 64 lanes. I assume that "normal" ddr technology uses a 64 bit controller, dual channel ddr uses a 128 bt controller. so with pc3200 memory, you normally are able to transfer 3200mb/s of data(or 3.2 gb/s), but with dual channel, you can transfer 6.4gb/s.
a maximum of 3gb of memory means what it means really ! if you have 3 slots of memory, then the max you can use would be 3 sticks of 1gb each.
now I don't know where you read that a ti4600 with a nforce2 chipset combining the spp and mcp-t would be the top of the line choice, but if you read this from nvidias site I wouldn't totally take it for granted as it is obvious they will preach for their products, of course, when using all nvidia products, you can be sure there will be no compatibility issues, but syngod did say that this asus board is one of the boards that can use the ati 9700 pro right off the bat and the ati card is considered the best performer between the two so, up to you to decide !
The msi k7n2 looks to have about the same features but does not have a cpu overheating protection or dual lan, but they have live update which makes it easier to upgrade the bios or anything else on the mainboard, I wouldn'T orient my choice based ONLY on that though as it is already easy to upgrade the bios the conventional way, msi is another notorious company, asus will be a better performer though, based on reviews on other boards from these two companies.msi uses MCP2, without the -T , you still egt the sound, so I really don'T know what more the -T gives you
as for the abit nf7-s, they are known to be the most overclockable boards, but you do not intend to do it so...
it uses the MCP2-T, a maximum of 2gb of memory with ddr400 and 3gb with lower speeds, the other companies offers 3gb for every speed.again, no dual lan.
Basically, those three boards are the same, they are 3 notorious companies, but the asus does have more features than the other 2, not a lot more but still.each has their own "specialty", asus is the heating protection, msi is the live update, abit is the softmenu which I think gives you easy access to overclocking options.
looks like syngod is "in love" (:p) with the asus one and he surely knows more than I do on the topic so I think you can trust him easily on his affirmations.
ddr333 is another way to say pc2700, ddr400 is another way to say pc3200, ddr266 is pc2100(the 266 means 266 mhz as the 2100 means 2100 mb/s of transdfer rate, ddr333 and pc2700 is the exact same time, they are synonyms)
well you wouldn'T believe how much time I put on this reply, so you better like it ;)
