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

Intel Motherboard: ASUS P4C800 Deluxe

Current Cost: $160
Months on list: 2
Price Change: -$6

Last month was the first time we were able to feature a motherboard featuring Intel's high end i875P chipset. The need for high-end performance and a new CPU allowed us include the same board for a second round again this month. The ASUS P4C800 Deluxe includes all the basic i875P amenities such as Hyper-Threading, 800MHz FSB support, PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology), and dual-channel DDR400 memory, making it the perfect companion to the Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor.

The ASUS P4C800 Deluxe includes a wealth of onboard extras, GigaBit LAN, Multi-RAID for ATA133 & Serial ATA (max 2 ATA-133 and 2 SATA HD ports), 6-channel digital audio, Firewire, and a super overclocking BIOS to name a few. The P4C800 is very similar to the i865PE-based P4P800 Deluxe, but includes a number of enhancements which translate into increased performance as well as price. However, this is the high end guide and getting every last once of performance is the name of the game, even if it means spending a few extra dollars. Thankfully, the retail price of the ASUS P4C800 Deluxe is quite affordable for a high-end i875P board, and gives us a bit of elbow room with our budget.

AMD Motherboard: ASUS K8V Deluxe

Current Cost: $135
Months on list: 3
Price Change: $0

AMD Athlon 64 motherboards are slowly but surely finding their way into the mainstream marketplace, but we're sticking with ASUS for our top pick. The ASUS K8V Deluxe is one of the best Athlon 64 motherboards on the market for use with AMD's new 754-pin configuration. It features a nice combination of an affordable price and rich feature set, which puts it ahead of just about everything else on the market right now.

The K8V Deluxe uses the VIA K8T800 chipset, which is currently the fastest Socket 754 platform, and gives a nice performance boost with its fully 16-bit, 1.6 GHz Hyper8 HyperTransport link. The board supports dual SATA RAID, Firewire, 6-channel audio, USB 2.0, and a built-in 3COM Gigabit LAN. As usual, ASUS includes a number of BIOS tweaks and overclocking options to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your system.