Another inexpensive Soltek board that's not too heavy on the features, this KT400A board sports the bare minimum to scrape by, with six-channel audio, dual-USB 2.0 ports and ATA133 support.

Built with convenience in mind, this board features six board-mounted USB 2.0 ports, and two more on a rear panel.

Soltek, purveyor of all things shiny and glittery, is one of the first companies to release a motherboard based around Intel’s eagerly anticipated i865 Springdale chipset.

QDI offers another board similar to the P4I865GMA Micro ATX board, except this one is full-size ATX.

One of the most interesting features of any board in this Labs is the 'AI' in the P4C800 Deluxe. The board will automatically inform you if you've plugged the wrong sort of peripheral into an audio jack, as well as informing of network cable problems.

Before you complain about how little expansion this board allows – note that it' Micro ATX. In fact, the P4I865GMA packs a punch. Offering DDR400 support, AGP 8x, SATA, Gigabit LAN, onboard audio, and top I/O options, this little board also sports onboard Intel graphics.

The S2662AN differs from most of the mobos in this Labs in that it is designed as a workstation-class board.

Although this board is fairly small on features, such as lacking SATA and FireWire, it does offer a space-saving platform for building a first PC or for upgrading your current system and would make a decent but no frills workhorse.

The MSI K7N2 is a good nForce2 board overall, scoring well against other nForce2 contenders.

At the very reasonable price of $157, ECS's L4IPEA2 is a great little board.

With the AX4C Max comes a whopping four SATA ports, which support RAID. The board will also be popular with overclockers with its comprehensive BIOS tweaking features, such as 1MHz stepping for the CPU and AGP/PCI clocks, as well as adjustable voltage for the CPU, AGP/PCI and RAM.

MSI's new motherboard is based on the Intel 865, or Springdale chipset, heralding the arrival of a host of new technologies (such as support for dual-channel DDR-RAM, AGP 8x and SATA) in Pentium 4 boards. These technologies have been commonplace in Althon boards for more than six months, and it's been an agonizing wait for many Pentium 4 fans.

The Athlon XP 3200+ will probably be the last Barton-core desktop processor to come from AMD before the launch later this year of the Athlon 64, its desktop 64-bit processor.

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

Soltek offers a 865 board for a fair price with the SL086MP-L. It has some good core specifications – it hosts both Pentium 4 and Celeron processors, with support for 800MHz FSB and up to 4GB of DDR400.

With average scores across the board, Viewsonic's entry came in just under two thousand dollars and avoided last place overall with a passing mark in real-world simulated tests.

A barebones Athlon mobo, the AK39N has enough functionality to set this board apart as an ideal platform for building a home PC or workstation.

The VIA KT400A chipset forms the foundation of the KT4A Ultra-FISR motherboard. Unlike the two other MSI boards in this roundup, the KT4A only supports SATA, and not IDE, RAID.

The Gigabyte SINXP1394 is a little pricey, but supports SATA, IDE RAID and Hyper-Threading, as well as FireWire

How could a motherboard possibly cost over $1,000? The short answer is: if it has everything built in. The 8KNXP is geared towards the server market, and is the only board in this Labs with an Ultra360 SCSI controller.