February Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 3

Motherboard

Intel Motherboard: ABIT TH7II-RAID

Current Cost: $161
Months on list: 2
Price Change: -$29

The process of choosing a Pentium 4 motherboard for our Extreme Gaming System has never been tougher, due to the proliferation of new DDR chipsets and the technological standstill that affects i850/RDRAM boards. The natural choice is the i850, which is still the performance leader (although PC2700 chipsets are very competitive). Since RDRAM is actually priced lower than DDR right now, it also brings a lot of value to the table as well. Still, we want all the hot features and expansion options we can find, so we're turning to the ABIT TH7II-RAID once again. This board has features to spare, such as 4 RIMM sockets, 1 AGP 4X, 1 CNR and 5 PCI slots, ABIT's powerful SoftMenu III BIOS for overclocking and tweaking, and a HighPoint IDE RAID controller. Although we would like to see an ATA-133 RAID controller chip as well, the TH7II-RAID remains the most fully-featured i850 board you can buy. We're hoping that SiS updates their 645 Southbridge to ATA133 soon, or that VIA gets their PC2700/ATA133 Pentium 4 chipset out and about so we can move to DDR and actually gain performance and features.

AMD Motherboard: ABIT KR7A-133RAID

Current Cost: $150
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

The choice of an Athlon XP motherboard is a bit easier task. Although the KT266A and nForce are the two main competitors, VIA's chipset offers a bit more flexibility in system configuration and there are simply more KT266A boards to choose from. But once the nForce 415-D is introduced, watch out. One of the very best KT266A motherboards has to be the ABIT KR7A-133R. It features 4 DIMM sockets (maximum of three DIMMs for standard DDR; four DIMMs for registered DDR), 1 AGP and 6 PCI slots, along with the overclocker's best friend: ABIT's SoftMenu III BIOS. The ABIT KR7A-133R not only supports ATA-133 through the included HighPoint RAID controller, but using the on-board IDE chipset as well. Just be certain to buy the newest "133R" model available, as there are some low prices on the standard KR7A-RAID models.