This is the kind of workstation that budding 3D artists have wet dreams over. It packs two Hyper-Threaded 3.06GHz Xeon processors – currently the best workstation processors on offer from Intel – a gigabyte of RAM and a 10,000rpm SCSI hard drive. In short, you'll be hard pressed to find a faster workstation without forking out the $15,000 or so for a blazing Silicon Graphics machine.

Gigabyte's new Canterwood-based GA-8KNXP is, without a doubt, one of the most full-featured motherboards we've ever seen. It incorporates all of the basics offered by the MSI 865PE Neo2 (see below) plus more. The differences between the older 845 and new 865 (Springdale) and 875 (Canterwood) chipsets are primarily feature-based – the 875P is designed to be the ultra-high-end option for extreme power users. As such, it's more expensive but has more niche capabilities.