A great combination of features at an excellent price makes this our new A-List board - suitable for just about everyone.

An HDMI-equipped board ideal for small media-centre systems

Like the KT4 Ultra, the ASUS A7V8X is an Athlon XP board that uses the VIA KT400 chipset. It packs in a truckload of extras, such as Serial ATA, FireWire, Gigabit LAN, AGP 8X and even RAID.

A little lacking in the feature department, the P4G8X Deluxe is lean in some big areas. Short 800MHz, DDR400 or DDR333 support, its biggest selling points are its BlueMagic PCI slot, inclusion of PC-cillin antivirus software, and ASUS PC Probe for system monitoring.

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.

The board's ability to increase CPU core voltage in 0.025V increments as well as adjustable FSB/DDR ratio with fixed AGP/PCI frequencies allows for maximum performance with absolute control.

The A7N8X Deluxe features dual-LAN ports, which allows you to connect to a broadband service and share it without the need for a separate PCI network card.

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.

Your cheapest MicroATX ticket into Intel's Core 2 world.

This early Nforce 570 for Intel board lacks luxuries and speed compared to Intel chipsets, but boasts a good price.

One gigabyte of RAM is enough to get most applications running smoothly, but should you buy the cheapest or the fastest?

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

An expensive board, but a fascintating way of getting a powerful, quiet system, especially if you're prepared to tweak.

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.

A budget board that open the door to Crossfire graphics.

A basic barebones motherboard with a price to match, ASROCK's P4VT8 Pentium 4 motherboard may not be the most feature packed mobo around, but what it lacks in integrated components, it more than makes up for with its bargain basement price tag and practical applications.