Best Motherboard for AIW 9700 Pro

[MikefromMI]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum. Did a search on the AIW 9700 Pro to try to come up with a decent motherboard replacement for my Gigabyte GA-8INXP. The shortest version - About 6 months ago I dumped just over 5K into a new liquid cooled system. My primary use for this PC was to transfer all of my video and photo albums to DVD. I had nothing but problems. At the time both ATI & Gigabyte pointed fingers at each other. But now enough time a lapsed for me to see that many are happy with the video card once they have the drivers working properly. I have read in a few threads that the Intel 7205 chipset (my motherboard) has nothing but problems with 8X AGP. I've downloaded all the new motherboard and video card drivers and played with every setting mentioned out there. For every problem I get past, a new one crops up.

I finally got beyond the driver and hardware failures. The system is stable. But all video play back from vcr capture studders, the sound doesn't match up, sometimes the sound just quits. Now it has moved on to the DVD drives. They'll play for awhile and just crap out in the middle of playback with voice mismatch and the studdering.

I want to find a "known good" board to replace the current. I've also gained a DV camcorder/camera and would like a 1394 interface onboard.

Both Gigabyte & ATI should be ashamed of the way their support and drivers are released. ATI's new drivers were crazy to get working. Their site suggestions don't even follow the readme's downloaded with the driver sets in regard to what to install first. I emailed Gigabyte 2 weeks ago and haven't got a reply. Thought maybe they'ed cut a deal on the new GA-8KNXP. But they have me so ticked right now I'm thinkin' of moving to Asus and putting the board on Ebay.

My IS dept. says to move to Asus also. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to hear from those that have the AIW 9700 pro working with Abit or Asus.

Thanks all. Sorry so long.
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Koolance PC2-601BLW - Gigabyte 8INXP- 3.06 - AIW9700Pro-512x2 Mushkin PC2100 L2 - WD400JB - WD120JB - Sony DVD Burner DRU-500A - Sony DVD drive DDU1621 - Antec True Blue 480 - Altec 5100

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