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

Pentium 4 Motherboard: ABIT BH7

Current Cost: $92
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

While we're still waiting for Intel's Springdale chipset, we decided to shift our choice of i845PE mainboard from the ASUS P4PE/L to the just released, and slightly more affordable, ABIT BH7. Following the tradition set forth by the original BH6, which is regarded as the first truly mainstream board to offer usable overclocking features, the BH7 is extremely impressive and offers exceptional overclocking options.

Using ABIT's 4-phase power management and their excellent SoftMenu overclocking tools, the sky's the limit for CPU speed. This isn't even mentioning the top-end feature set, including support for Serial ATA, 6-channel audio, 10/100 LAN and USB2.0, and we couldn't pass up this board, especially at a price-tag of only $92.

Athlon XP Motherboard: A7N8X nForce2 Motherboard

Current Cost: $115
Months on list: 3
Price Change: $0

While NVIDIA has been experiencing some challenges with their GeForce FX line of products, their engineers have done an exceptional job with the latest chipset iteration: the nForce2. With true dual-channel DDR400, HyperTransport, and AGP 8X support, this is the most powerful solution for AMD Athlon XP based systems.

We are sticking with the ASUS A7N8X as this month's nForce2 board of choice. The A7N8X includes three DIMM slots for a total max memory of 3GB of DDR400, with up to two sticks running in dual-channel mode. The onboard amenities are nice, though a Deluxe version can be found for a bit more cash. ASUS has also gone above what many other nForce2 board makers are offering and included the four mounting holes that have been removed from the AMD specification sheet, making owners of high-end heatsinks very pleased. Despite a few hiccups in various beta BIOS revisions, the A7N8X with the 1002 final BIOS is an excellent choice (even allowing multiplier selection with some Athlon XP processors) and overall board quality is top notch.

We have been getting reports of users unable to reach 400 MHz FSB with the current iteration of most nForce2 boards, but until we see 400 MHz FSB Barton cores as well as newer BIOS updates, we can't be certain they will or will not work with the upcoming chips. Until we are able to test this board thoroughly with upcoming Barton CPUs we will continue to recommend the A7N8X as the nForce2 board of choice.