The move to a new platform brings credible new challengers to Intel’s Core 2 processors

A decent board, but the Hybrid SLI feature doesn’t justify the high asking price

An uninspiring board with no strong selling point

A capable little package at an attractive price

Cheap, but there’s not much here to cheer about

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.

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.

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.