All the options you could want, although it’s pricey

A high-end board bristling with great ideas

Big, brash and versatile, but for top-end PCs only. Enthusiasts will love it.

Packed with extras to target some of Vista’s interesting new features, but it isn’t quite the marvel we were hoping for.

A great choice for overclockers, but the vast majority of people should buy a cheaper motherboard and better CPU.

A beautifully tiny computer-on-a-board that you should only consider if you have a specific use in mind

Based around the SiS655 chipset, the MSI 655 MAX-FISR is a well-rounded Socket 478 motherboard.

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.

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

Albatron's offering to the 865P family is bursting at the seams with features. SATA and IDE RAID, eight-channel audio, FireWire, dual-channel DDR, USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet.

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

The WinFast K7NCR18G-PROII has a well -rounded set of features, and besides the ABIT NF7-M, it is the only Socket-A board in our round up to offer support for a front side bus speed of 400MHz.

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

For it's price, the 7NNXP has the usual set of features, and offers IDE RAID but no SATA RAID.

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 4PCA3+ packs a whopping six IDE slots and two SATA ports, perfect for a jumbo-sized array. A PCB-mounted LED displays error codes, great for quick boot troubleshooting, and the inclusion of Gigabit Ethernet and ECC DIMM support would make this the board of choice for a single processor server, while USB, dual-channel DDR and S/PDIF ports would set you up nicely for a home machine setup.

Scoring strongly for features across all the boards, the EPoX 4PDA2+ is formidable with, four IDE and SATA ports, IDE and SATA RAID, and excellent I/O connectivity

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.

Compared with some other VIA KT400A boards, the Gigabyte 7VAXP Ultra is a little pricey; however it’s also the most feature-packed.

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.