November High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 3

Pentium 4 Motherboard: ASUS P4PE/L

Current Cost: $121
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

For this month's High End PC Buyer's Guide, our upcoming video card choice requires a nod to system stability and rock-solid compatibility. For this reason, we're moving away from some of the newer AGP 8X chipsets, and although we have gotten them to work in the test lab, even a single dissatisfied reader is one too many. This doesn't mean we're scrimping in the performance, overclocking or features department, as our selection of the Intel 845PE should attest. This is the fastest DDR chipset Intel has ever produced, and along with the support for DDR333 memory and Hyperthreading, there have been other memory timing enhancements as well. Our selection this month is the ASUS P4PE/L, an extremely impressive i845PE motherboard with all the fixings.

The ASUS P4PE/L is a near-perfect motherboard for performance users. It starts with a superb physical design, with literally no issues to be found during installation or while adding peripherals. The board also performs right up there with the best, and is one of the fastest DDR33 boards we've reviewed. The system BIOS is a pleasure to use, and along with full access to FSB overclocking, CPU core voltage, DDR voltage and AGP voltage, there is also an option to lock the AGP/PCI dividers at standard 66/33 MHz levels. This gives it the final nod as a true overclocker's board and we highly recommend this product for new system buys. We are choosing the basic model with standard integrated features, but for a few bucks more, you can get Serial ATA RAID and Firewire options as well.

Athlon XP Motherboard: EPoX EP-8K5A3+

Current Cost: $115
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

As with our Intel motherboard choice, we're sticking with safer choice and taking the KT333 chipset for our AMD selection. The EPoX EP-8K5A3+ is the actual motherboard, and this is one more extension of their impressive Athlon XP line-up. The upgrades from older KT333 models include USB 2.0,and integrated 6-channel audio, but the EP-8K5A3+ still features the high performance operation and seamless overclocking users have come to expect from EPoX motherboards. Best of all, EPoX has certified their KT333 and KT400 motherboards for use with the upcoming 333 MHz Athlon XP processors, which extends the upgrade path quite nicely.