For Tier 1 motherboards I'd look at:
Asus
Gigabyte
MSI
Also, brand new ABIT boards are worth considering (but basically anything newer than Intel Conroe boards or their
very newest AMD Socket 939 -- like the ATI RD580 -- boards are okay, but the older stuff -- back to Pentium 3 stuff when they were primo -- is junk).
While they aren't strictly Tier 1 I'd also look at DFI. They've been putting out some extremely quality boards lately. DFI boards do tend to perform near or at the highest (especially when gaming or overclocking), but they tend to take a lot of configuration work. Luckily, they have a forum almost as active and dedicated as MC's at
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/index.phpFirst of all.... If you're going Intel, go Conroe (and wait at least a month or two or you'll pay early adopter prices). Don't even mess with the Pentium 4 or D processors. They're really junk. If you're going AMD, wait until next week. On or around the 24th AMD is planning to slash (by as much as 54%) their processor prices. They haven't (of course) officially announced this, but it's widely reported. They have to really, as finally Intel's new architecture has caught up to (and really surpassed) AMDs (it took them long enough). Of course, this is compared to AMD's older generation. AMD has a new generation of processors coming next year, and supposedly it will be pin compatible with the current/brand-new Socket AM2 (meaning working on the same motherboards assuming they support the current standard as they should). Personally, for a completely fresh build, I'd probably wait a week or two and go with a Socket AM2 AMD board, for the potential of AM3 further on down the line. If I wanted a Laptop, I'd wait 2 months and go with a Core 2 Duo system.... Probably an Apple that I'd throw Windows XP on via Bootcamp.
If I already had some DDR memory that I could re-use, I'd look at a Socket 939 AMD Athlon64 (or Opteron 165 really) based system. The
ASUS A8R32-MVP ATI RD580 board is spectacular (supposedly ABIT and DFI made nice ATI based boards too). The ASUS is what I'm writing this to you on though. For nVidia based systems, I'd look at DFI, Gigabyte, and ASUS. I'd only look at one that supported 2x16 channel PCIe slots though if you think you might ever go SLI (dual video card). If not, just look at an nForce4 Ultra. Don't go lower than an Ultra.
Just decide if you want an nVidia video card, or an ATI. If you want an ATI, I'd look at the ASUS AM2 RD580 board when it comes out (be careful though, there is currently a Socket 939 board that won't work with a brand new AM2 processor). The AM2 ATI board aren't out yet, but are coming soon (I'd also check the offerings from DFI and ABIT). Do not buy any of the older ATI RD480 or SB450 based boards as they have problems. Only an ATI RD580 with either the ATI SB600 (for AM2) or the ULi south bridge (for Socket 939) are worth considering on the ATI front.
Though I haven't read any reviews of the new generation of nVidia boards, the DFI nForce4 (socket 939) boards couldn't be beat with tweaks and the ASUS nForce4 2x16 PCIe board was primo without tweaks, so I'd look at those brands. I also hear the ABIT board is killer (but only the 2x16 channel PCIe board).
For Intel boards I'd go with an Intel chipset. The others (VIA and nVidia mostly) just aren't up to snuff (the new ATI RD580+SB600 based boards should be nice but I haven't read much on them and I'm not sure they're even out yet). Again, for Intel, consider nothing but Conroe (AKA Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme). Their Pentium 4 and Pentium D lines are dead, and seriously underperform the AMD offerings. Conroe whomps ass, but isn't out yet, and who knows what pricing will be... The shipments on them are rumored to be slow and few.
Make sure to check reviews, but at a variety of places. So many review sites are biased, so I always check a bunch of them:
http://www.anandtech.com/http://techreport.com/http://www.beyond3d.com/http://www.driverheaven.net/http://www.firingsquad.com/http://www.xbitlabs.com/http://www.hardocp.com/As far as Video offerings (TV tuners), I like the ATI 650/550 Pro based cards, particularly Sapphire branded ones. They are simple. Junk free. Cheap and good. I'm somewhat of an ATI fan boy though. I just don't like the drivers on nVidia cards (they confuse me), and I like ATI's often superior video quality (for A/V type playback rather than game-focused). For nVidia, I'd probably look at BFG.
Hope this helps. I had a lot of wine tonight (and rum punch and tequilla shots -- okay, only one of those), so if I made any bad typos or anything, just ignore me.
Have a fabulous night.
Goodbye.