I have been in the IT industry for over 10 years. I have found that the most stable and compatable chipsets are Intels (all except the i820). Steer Clear of SiS, VIA, A-0pen (forget the name of their chipsets its been so long). If you are going with a PIII solution then 440BX is the most stable. The PIII i815EP is also very stable but can only utilize 512 MB memory so that might not be good. If you go with P4 solution then the 845PE, 865PE, 875PE are the very best.
The board I use is an ASUS P4P800 865PE. Uses DDR 266,333,400 in Dual Channel mode up to 4GB.
I have heard good things about the SiS 655 chipset and I have just aquired a MSI 655 MAX FISR and I am going to try it out for music recording. Will let you know what (if any) issues arise.
Hope this helps you in making your decision.
Anthony