With CrossFire performance more erratic than SLI, and NVIDIA outgunning ATI with its Shader Model 3 cards, it's hard to recommend this board.

Upgrade to an AM2 Athlon 64 system now

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

Clever corner cutting gives us an affordable, upgradeable performer.

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.

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.

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

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

This is one of the few nForce boards here to take advantage of the GeForce4 MX graphics chip and supply an AGP 8x slot.

Like the AK39N, the AB48N is a slightly smaller ATX board with two DIMMs, and does not come with SATA, although it does incorporate six-channel audio and 10/100 Ethernet.

Well and truly gone are the days of boring green and brown PCBs – and welcome to the yellow motherboard, care of Soltek.

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

VIA has dominated the AMD arena the last couple of years, and its latest offering is the KT400 chipset, which despite its name, only officially handles DDR333 memory. Many boards however do have limited support for DDR400, as well as AGP 8x.

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 nForce2 is the only dual-channel memory controller available in the AMD pantheon. There are two Northbridges to choose from: one with the Integrated GeForce4 MX-class graphics (nForce2 GT) and one without (nForce2 ST). Both offer support for AGP 8x and up to DDR400 memory, although we recommend you use DDR266 or DDR333 memory in synchronous mode (DDR266 for chips with a 266MHz FSB, DDR333 for those with a 333MHz FSB) for best performance.

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

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.

Legend QDI

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.

VIA's KT400 is the latest in a very long line of Athlon chipsets. While it doesn't really deliver a huge performance boost over its predecessor, the KT333, it does have support for a number of upcoming technologies, including Serial ATA, AGP 8X and PC3200 DDR RAM.