I don't know much about motherboards, like I said, but I do read Maximum PC. A great magazine I might add. In their may issue they did a motherboard shootout between two AMD FX-53 Mobo's and two Intel P4 EE Mobo's. All four of these are very good Mobo's in my opinion and offer a wide array of features. For AMD they reviewed the ASUS SK8N and the SK8V. The SK8N recieved an 8 out of 10 and the SK8V recieved a 9. For gaming with the AMD proccessor I would go with the SK8V. Not only is it better looking cosmetics wise, but it scores better fps in gaming vs. the SK8N and has more features such as the ability to run DUAL RAID and a Wi-Fi connector. Not sure what a Wi-Fi connector is, lol, but it muct be good. You really can't go wrong with either board, IMO, they are both great values.
I'm much more informative about AMD rather than Intel, but I will just use qoutes form the magazine. The two Intel mobo's that were compared were the MSI 875P Neo vs. the PT880 Neo. The magazine rates the 875P a "9" and the PT880 an "8." As far as presentation goes the 875P Neo takes the cake. It is a beautiful board, and the heatsink fan lights up in blue and red! The 875P also wins against the PT880 in features. It has 8 high speed USB 2.0 ports, and quad SATA RAID. It also features four light up LED's inicating what goes right-or wrong- when booting up your PC. The PT880 comes close but can't quite beat the 875P when it comes to features. I won't even bother going trought gaming performace with these boards. All I will say is that the 875P Neo destroys the PT880 in almost every gaming, cpu, and memory benchmark. If it sounds like I am biased twoards the 875P, it's because I am. IMO it is a much better board than the PT880 and it only costs 80$!, half the price of the PT880. If your using an intel proccessor, go with the 875P Neo, hands down.
I hope this was of some help. Let me know if you have any more questions.