December 2002 Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 3

Motherboard

When we choose a motherboard for our Value Gaming System, we really try and get the best bang for our buck, while trying to maintain the most future-proof and high-performance design. This isn't always the easiest task, and we also have to ensure that the board in question is affordable, and with a nice mix of performance, overclocking and features to boot. Whether you're buying a low-cost gaming system or an ultra high-end powerhouse, the motherboard is still one of the most important purchases, as it provides the backbone for your entire computer.

Athlon XP Motherboard: MSI KT4 Ultra

Current Cost: $90
Months on list: New
Price Change: -$19

The great KT400 vs. nForce2 debate is a non-issue for our value gaming PC, as even the lower-end boards featuring NVIDIA's newest chipset are simply out of budget. This is by no means a negative, as the KT400 selection is varied, are priced to sell, and many of these boards support DDR400 overclock speeds. Our motherboard selection is again the MSI KT4 Ultra, which fits our price, performance features requirements perfectly and comes from a vendor who continually offers value-priced, quality products.

The features of the MSI KT4 Ultra include DDR400, AGP 8X, ATA-133 RAID, USB 2.0, on-board 6-channel audio and ATA-133. We're sticking with the standard KT4 Ultra, but there are models sporting Bluetooth and Serial ATA functions, assuming you pony up a bit more cash.

Pentium 4 Motherboard: ABIT SR7-8X

Current Cost: $84
Months on list: New
Price Change: N/A

Our selection of a Pentium 4 motherboard not only takes the price, features and performance options into consideration, but also places a high emphasis on overclocking our Pentium 4-1.8A into the stratosphere. The SiS 648 is a perfect choice, as it offers high-end performance at a very attractive price point, while also sporting a 533 MHz front-side bus and support for DDR400 (or higher) memory speeds. This makes the SiS 648 the natural solution to providing high-end gaming performance to our value system, and there are a host of very attractive products from MSI, ABIT, ASUS and EPoX that really caught our eye.

After its excellent showing in our SiS 648 Roundup, our choice for our value system is naturally the ABIT SR7-8X. This motherboard is available at simply incredible prices, and features a powerful design just built for overclocking and performance gaming. These include control over full FSB speeds, core and DDR voltages, and even an option to lock the AGP/PCI divider. As a cherry on top, ABIT also sports higher-then DDR400 speeds, for those inclined to push their memory to the outer limits. ABIT has also upgraded the on-board features somewhat, and include LAN and audio functionality. The ABIT SR7-8X is one of the better motherboard buys out there, and is an inexpensive and powerful base for our gaming PC, and gives us one of the better shots at taking our Pentium 4-1.8A GHz to the outer overclocking limits.