best mobo easiest setup. asap

[drunknbass]

i just built a new system today q6600 with intel DG33FBC board and figured out theres no way to get lan working on it.

 

i also couldnt seem to boot from a ide hd with osx on it already. but i managed to get a sata - ide adapter to work and bot.

 

so its going back tom and i dunno what mobo to get.. it has to be in the 130$ range and be @ the same specs.

 

my last mobo was a 965p s3 gigabyte mobo that works good now but was a {censored} to setup and realized for osx i use only sata ports or ide, but not both.. id like a simple board that can use ide or sata, doesnt have issues with sata driver support, or any hard ass hacks to get stuff to work.. id also like if it had an onboard videocard that would work aongside a pci-e card, seems like the intel i have defaults to the pcie card if theres one plugged in and cannot use both for dual monitor. i have a geforce 7300 that i just cant get dual monitors to work on so that would make it easier. or maybe dual pcie slots and i can throw 2 gfx cards in to get dual monitors working if i have to..

 

i dont need to overclock it.. i need a decision by tomm.. itd help if th mobo was on frys.com or microcenter.com as those are prob where ill go buy it from.

 

thx!

[BJMoose]

Of course there is no perfect MB out there other than the one that's in the Mac Pro. The intel 945 chipset is still probably the most compatible. If you want the possibility of expanding to the core2quad processors, I believe the next best chipset is the 975. My experiences with the 965 were that it worked, but only after much tweaking and I was never confident with the stability factor of my Gigabyte DQ6 board (although Aqua-mac seems to have his up and running perfectly). I chose the Bad Axe 2 board because of its stability with both Windows and OSX86. I'm still (and probably always will be) primarily a Windows user.

 

Using uphuck's latest v1.4iR3, and Koolkal's 10.4.10 updater, there's very little else needed to get the board up and running. Onboard audio out works with taruga's patch, but I don't even use that anymore. I have a USB Creative Labs 24bit SB Live box hooked up for audio in and out and it registers itself at OS installation...no drivers needed. Cost me $17USD plus shipping from eBay. My 7600GS gives me dual monitor output, although it's limited to 1 DVI and 1 VGA. I can't get both DVIs to work. That's more symptomatic of the flashed rom card than the MB. All 8 SATA connections work (both ICH7 and Marvell) out of the box. Checking the ICH7 box on OS installation shows them as ICH7 in System Profiler but that isn't really necessary, just cosmetic. Both IDE controllers work fine with my Pioneer DVD writers. USB, Firewire, Lan all work out of the box.

 

If you really want to spend some time and money, you can look at Aqua-mac's system. He/she has found all the little extras to give full functionality of a Mac Pro. Hope this helps.