This is obviously a matter with several many opinions and experiences. Here's one.The choices I have are: Gigabyte GA-K8NS Chipset: NVIDIA nForce3 250 + ITE IT8712F Audio: Realtek ALC850 Ac'97 Lan: ICS 1883 10/100Tx RJ45 or Marvell 8001 Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 4X MCPs Audio: Realtek ALC850 Ac'97 Lan: CICADA8201 Gigabit Asus K8V-DELUXE Chipset: VIA K8T800 + VT8237 Audio: ADI 1980 Lan: 3COM 3C940 Gb These are almost in the same price range, the first being the cheapest. Which one would you suggest? Are nvidia proprietary drivers working well?
My best experiences by far have been with Abit KV8-Pro and AV8 boards, both with K8T800 Pro chipsets. I have not used audio in a single AMD64+Linux system though, but as for stability, quality and hardware compatibility (except for audio, not tested) with Debian Pure64, I haven't had any problems. As for onboard LAN, the via-velocity has performed quite well. Via kindly provides sources that work with older kernel versions too, as I believe the driver came with the kernel only starting from 2.6.9.
Personal and friends' recommendations suggest that problematic hardware includes Asus and MSI (low quality, too many faulty products received) and several nForce motherboards from various manufacturers (stability issues).
Experiences with Athlon64 Windows systems have provided similar results. Abit+Via is a stable combination.
I want to emphasize that I'm talking about only a bit over ten tested systems with Debian Pure64 and none of these have been in workstation use. But if I'd need a Linux workstation, I'd probably be betting on K8T800 Pro or K8T890 as the chipset of choice and probably Abit as motherboard.
Out of your listed choices, I'd probably bet on Asus, due to the Via chipset. I haven't had too many positive Asus experiences, but then again, I haven't tested any in the past half year.
-Kyuu 'Vekotin' Eturautti