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

Pentium 4 Motherboard: ABIT IC7

Current Cost: $136
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

The initial reviews of Intel's new 875P chipset have been quite favorable, and with its support for 800MHz FSB CPUs and dual-channel DDR400, you really can't go wrong. The i875P was designed for use in the workstation market, and its higher performance levels also carry with it a higher price as well, even when compared to the more mainstream i865PE. At this point in time, we've got the budget for a high-end i875P, and there's no sense in being "penny smart, pound stupid" and losing out on anything to save a few bucks. An i875P based board as it offers the best performance with high-end 800 MHz or 533 MHz Pentium 4 processors, so that's where we're headed.

We chose to go with an ABIT board once again, and selected their new IC7 875P, which incidentally, checks in at a lower price than its big brother the IC7-G. This is one of the most reasonably-priced i875P motherboards, and at only $136, it stands as a great buy and an excellent performance and overclocking board. It includes support for 800/533 MHz Pentium 4 CPUs, two Parallel and two Serial ATA ports, with SATA RAID 0 supported, 6-channel onboard audio, and Firewire. If you absolutely require Gigabit Ethernet, you may want to shell out the extra cash for the IC7-G. Even so, the ABIT IC7 is a super deal for a high-end system, and we're lucky to be able to fit a powerful i875P motherboard in this Guide in the first place.

Athlon XP Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-X Deluxe nForce2 Motherboard

Current Cost: $123
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

We have recommended the ASUS nForce2 A7N8X for the past few months, and since we have a few extra dollars in our budget, it's only natural to upgrade to the slightly more expensive (and feature rich) Deluxe version. Compared to the standard edition, the A7N8X Deluxe version includes an extra Ethernet controller (3Com), a Serial ATA controller, extra USB 2.0 ports, IEEE 1394a support, and the more powerful MCP-T South bridge, that includes the NVIDIA SoundStorm Audio Processor Unit (APU).

When purchasing an A7N8X make sure that you pick up a revision 2.0 board, which sports the new A7N8X-X name. These boards are certified by AMD at 400MHz FSB speeds, and are the best to operate an Athlon XP 3200+ on. However, if you are a user of the 1.0x revision series, ASUS has updated the BIOS to version 1004 which includes support for 400MHz FSB CPUs and initial reports seem promising. When buying a new board, we'd rather be safe than sorry and recommend getting a 2.X revision out of the box.