need a great gamming mb

[sweet]

I am utterly in a fog over which motherboard (mb) to buy
for a barebones gaming server. Could you please filter the
huge selection of mb's down to a few of the best? If not how
about a link to someone who could help me.

I am not a newbie with computers.

[CaptMorgan]

If you can wait until next spring, I know that's a ways off, but Intel will be coming out with their Springdale line of chipsets. Springdale is going to be dual channel 400MHz DDR and is going to smoke!

Are you looking to do some overclocking or anything like that? If not, some of the most stable and dependable boards out there are manufactured by Intel. Intel's D845PEBT2 is a great board, but it isn't exactly a stipped down version. It has RAID and Firewire. Here's a link for a review: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1725
I found it on www.pricewatch.com for 121 US Dollars.

If you're looking to tweek n overclock, Abit makes some very nice fast mobos. I've had a couple of their boards and I've been extremely happy with them. I'd look into the 845PE chipset instead of the 850 because DDR is a hell of a lot cheaper then RDRAM and 333MHz DDR is just barely slower then 1066 RDRAM.

A good place to check out mobo reviews and comparisions is www.tomshardware.com He get's a little biased in my opinion once in a while, but most of his stuff is good and goes by the numbers.