Me thinks Lasereth is *slightly* biased
Seriously, research what's best for you and keep in mind that USB 2.0 and SATA are emerging standards that are set to
replace their predecesors and that 8x is the current AGP standard.
I'm biased towards the VIA chuipset like Lasereth is biased towards NVidia, so choose what you like.
I stick to MSI, Shuttle,Abit,and DFI in that order for mobo maker prefrence.