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. The KT4 Ultra-SR integrates a good mix of these features along with single ATA/133 RAID port, but is lacking some of the more high-end options, such as FireWire and integrated LAN, as found in the ASUS A7V8X above.

MSI's board performed well in our test suite, consistently outpacing the ASUS A7V8X - although not by more than 1% in most cases. Interestingly, performance actually dropped slightly in both boards when we benchmarked using 400MHz DDR; this seems to be a common problem with the KT400, and something that VIA is reportedly looking into.

Component layout on the motherboard was generally good, although the RAM clips were too close to the AGP slot, making them impossible to open if you have a large graphics card installed.

At $330, the KT4 Ultra-SR is a little expensive compared to other KT400 boards. While it is only slightly cheaper than the A7V8X, it doesn't provide the FireWire and LAN ports of the ASUS board. If you don't fancy either of these, the KT4 Ultra-SR is still a stellar board, and worth the price.