A simple board that struggles to justify its price

One of the more difficult units to navigate whilst installing hardware, ABIT's DigiDice barebones was one of only two submitted systems to feature bay real estate to accommodate more than a single optical drive, the other system being the Soltek Qbic EQ-3401M.

This card was the second poorest performing X800 XT on show in 3DMark01SE's DirectX 8 tests, with roughly 400 3Dmarks between it and the Gigabyte RX80X256V. But DX8 testing certainly isn't everything these days, and ABIT's card put in a good showing to take fourth in the DirectX 9.0-based 3DMark05, putting it on par with the Labs winning PowerColor X800 XT and GeCube card.

One of only three ABIT boards in our roundup supporting ATA133, the SR7-8X lacks SATA and features only two-channel audio.

ABIT went a little nuts with the OTES's heatsink, but it's an exceptional card that delivers great performance for a very reasonable price.

An appealingly upmarket board at a fair price

Bringing up the rear, the Siluro consistently scored fewer marks than all other cards in our round-up, half that of even the second-lowest scoring card.

The BH7 sports plenty of connectivity options, with two S/PDIF ports for optical audio; six-channel audio, SATA and side-mounted IDE ports.

A board with middle-of-the-road features, the NF7-M boasts a well-designed and spacious layout with some nifty additions.

Almost identical to the IC7, the IC7-G also features Gigabit LAN and four SATA connectors. Three fan headers on the board allow for the heatsink fan, case fan and an auxiliary fan, which is good for tweakers.

The IC7 offers support for up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR, delivering bandwidth of 4.8GB/s. Decked out with every port known to humanity, it has integrated FireWire; USB 2.0; SATA; 10/100 Ethernet and six-channel audio.

ABIT's new NVIDIA nForce2 motherboard, the NF7-S, supports the AMD Duron, Athlon, and Athlon XP, and also features dual 400MHz DDR memory controllers.

It's called the FunFab, and it's a digital photo frame with a printer inside. Your friends like what they see? Just print them off a photo.

ABIT's take on the X700 chipset was the least expensive by a good margin of the three we received. In our benchmarks, it topped 3DMark01, and even outperformed the speedier 6600GT's.

Some items just don't fit any other category, but their looks, features or quirkness scream 'Christmas Gift Idea'. From everyone's favourite AI dinosaur, Pleo, to the groundbreaking Tivo PVR, we think we've got a little something for everyone.

Finishing around the middle of the features and benchmark department this month, the KD7-SL still has a lot going for it.

At $327 Abits BG7 wasnt quite the cheapest Pentium 4 motherboard we examined, but it still proves to be a decent all-in-one solution for power-users on a budget. It has onboard Ethernet, Intels new integrated graphics controller, and USB 2.0 support to boot.

The only PC in our mini roundup this month to feature a rather boring beige case, it more than makes up for its looks with blistering performance at a very reasonable price. Inclusion of thumb screws will allow you to get at your hardware quickly and without the need for tools. Always handy for those of us that like to fiddle frequently.

Our poor receptionist didn’t quite know what to do when Altech’s monolithic machine turned up. She had a point.