So after asking jlhaslip (thanks btw!) which is the best PHPBB3 or SMF he said go on guess...
AEF, never heard of it before untill today, today my friends SMF gets shot. AEF is fantastic It has got little sexy icons at the bottom that move (yes move). The icons will zoom in and out.

I have never seen such an advanced forum with so many features STANDARD! For example, it has a HTML section so you can put what you want in the headers and footers! No nasty messed up code (like SMF or PHPBB3)

I have gotta say well done to the developers of phpbb3 though their new forum is fantastic BUT AEF is one step ahead!

AEF can be seen here
An example can be seen here
There's a "banking" system for AEF that resembles Trap's credit system HERE
There's also a shoutbox... Standard, you can turn it off and on if you want!

I am currently installing the banking system
I will be writing back here soon

And a Demo site here: http://www.jlhaslip.trap17.com/aef_103_demo/ which will actually allow you to access the backend for a preview of the Admin Panel.

Register and request the Demo Admin Status. Simple.

Doesn't seem that groundbreaking but it does seem nice. I'm actually working on a simple machines forum installation at the moment and i'm not entirely happy with the interface that it uses after coming from an IPB background. But, for something that is free, i guess you can't really complain. I'm actually more interested in PHPBB3 because it looks like it might be a bit better than SMF but I think it is too late now because i've already done too much work on my simple machines forum to turn back now and install a new one.

It looks awesome =]

I agree, SMF died with SMF2.0... it just isn't nice. I was hoping for a brand new signature look... all I got was the same old same old but with a new touch that really doesn't fit it. It's like phpBB3 using the old SubSilver style from phpBB2 on as phpBB3 as well... doesn't work.

I might try AEF, but I don't think there are any current converters to it yet...