Is this a good replacement board?

[Acreo Aeneas]

Hey everyone,

I need some advice from those of you who have any experience whatsoever with Gigabyte and Asus motherboards. Here is the situation:

It has been roughly 2 weeks since my computer went poof. The current motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G. In short, the computer will not POST and nothing appears on screen when I boot up the system. All I did was put in another pair of DDR400 ram, but since it did not work, I took that pair out. I went through each and every part of the system, and they all check out, nothing is fried, but I'm thinking the motherboard is once again having issues with the RAM (seems GA mobos from around this time has lots of memory issues). I'm not too sure. I only know that what research I have done says that the Gigabyte 865PE series of mobos has random memory issues, where it will not POST with many different kinds of RAM. The only solution which I have found in my research that works is to RMA the mobo for a replacement. Unfortunately, my motherboard is already past it's warranty period, so an RMA is out of the question.

I did try to get my system booting on one stick, and with another pair of ram, but nothing worked.

I'm looking at the ASUS P4S800D-X motherboard based on the SiS655FX chipset. I've read a few reviews, and all seems to be fine with the motherboard.

Would that be a good replacement board for my 8IPE1000-G? Will I encounter any future problems with that ASUS board/chipset? And finally, from experience in the past, any major hardware change leads me to put on a fresh install of XP, will that be the case with the ASUS board since it is a different chipset?

And would this be a good solution to my mobo problem? I only have $200 to spend, in case anyone has other suggestions.

[Dick Blonov]

Always been happy with Asus, well made, reliable, both Intel and SiS chipsets, never had a problem.

And if you swap mobos, you might consider an XP repair install instead of a complete re-install.

See here for some tips on motherboard replacement.

DB

[Acreo Aeneas]

Thanks for the advice

[Hambergler]

I had this mobo for a long time. I really liked it, but had to move to PCIe. I don't think they are available new anymore.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-P4P800-E-De...em180068947184

[Grunt 70]

I've done three homebuilds all using Asus. I've been very happy with them. One of the builds went bad after a year and a half but the other two have been rock solid.

Asus support isn't so good but their product seems well made so that's good. Each Mfg has a support forum and it might be worth it to check in there and see what the other owners are yapping about....important to remember that people only go there when they have problems so don't let that scare you into thinking that everyone has the same problems as the posters.