Ati M/B's any good ?

[Hulkster316]

Gonna be doing a new build in the next couple of months and while im not usual someone to value style over substance love the look of this M/B
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=307992

Are the ATI boards any good or is Nforce 4 leaps ahead of it ? Not worried about sli as im gonna use a x1900xtx instead , cheers for any opions.

[davidstone28]

Although nForce4 still isn't 100% perfect (eg. IDE driver performance), its a far more mature and well developed product that the ATI xpress product you've linked to. Nvidia have spent years refining their motherboard chipsets - from the original nForce to the current nForce4, whereas ATI are still (relatively) new to the chipset game.

I'm sure ATI will produce a comparable product in due course, but at the moment, their motherboard chipsets (and motherboards based on those chipsets) generally lag behind the nForce4 products in terms of features and speed.

There are loads of reviews/comparisons on the web. Here's the Hexus review:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1510&page=3

[kalniel]

ATI boards seem to be very good in most respects, especially for the enthusiast/overclocker. However they have a couple of achilles heels, most especially USB performance (I think). Asus have got around this problem by using a ULI southbridge which provides a great solution and this would be the recommended option if you were going for an ATI chipset.