October buyers' guide to motherboards in the UK

EARLIER THIS WEEK we published our guide to motherboards in the USA. Now let's have a look at what's available in the UK. As mentionned yesterday, motherboards choosen should be affordable, stable and available. No more, no less. The four categories that we analyse will be socket A, socket 754, socket 478 and socket 775. No socket 939 or 940. Prices for these processors are not exactly affordable. A socket 939 pin still carry a premium over the normal socket 754. On pricewatch for example, the price delta between the Athlon 3200, 754 and 939 pin versions, could buy you a pretty good motherboard.

In the socket A category, I've chosen the Abit KV7 motherboard for its value for money and performance. Available for £31.65+VAT at Ebuyer, it uses VIA's newest KT600 chipset which supports up to 400MHz processors. It supports 6-channel sound and SPDIF out as well as AGP 8X, LAN and USB 2.0. The board is definitely more compact than others, a little like the VI7 we saw yesterday. The board is slightly more rectanglular than normal.

It does feature two SATA ports and the usual set of five PCI and AGP slot. The sound is from VIA VT1616 and is probably better than any Realtek or CMedia option. Up to eight USB 2.0 ports are available. The Abit Soft menu III, which is yet another illustration of Abit's famous overclock friendly BIOS, is also included. The board performance will not win it any gold medals since it firmly sticks in the average rather than the outstanding category. But like Overclockercafe which gave it a recommended buy award, this is a card which goes on your list if you are looking for very good performance from a well known brand at a right price tag. Yes I do know that several hardware sites have complained about the board but it seems that with the last two BIOSes launched two months ago which "enhances DRAM adjustability" and "enhances 3D quality from AGP driving value in AGP 8x mode", they have been correctly addressed.

Asrock might not be everybody's cup of tea but at £23.83+VAT for a socket 478 product at Dabs, it makes an outstanding Pentium IV motherboard purchase. The board is based on the PT800 chipset from VIA and the latter offers 800MHz and Hyperthreading support for the latest Pentium IV. The spec list is quite impressive for a motherboard of this price. Two RAID-Enabled Ultra ATA and SATA connectors, five PCI slots, up to eight USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and Asrock's own Overclocking technology called Hybrid Booster which allows safe overclocking. You also get an AGP8x slot, 5.1 AC97 compliant sound module and three DDR memory slots. Performance and general look of the board won it a 9 out of 10 by PC Authority from down under.

Gigabyte is almost always sure to feature in a best of motherboard short list. The GA-8IPE775 PRO is a clear example of why. While being one of the cheaper LGA779 boards around, it is one of the better build and most powerful. It is build around the 865PE chipset and offers a load of features, winning it the Legion hardware Supreme value hardware where it was found to perform identically to a 915P motherboard which costs much more. The beast support dual DDR400 channels for even more bandwidth from four DDR DIMM slots, a Gigabit Ethernet controller courtesy of Marvel, two Firewire port from TI and a 7.1 Realtek ALC850 audio codec. Apart from that the rest is pretty standard, SPDIF out, two SATA ports and Two PATA ports.

Five PCI slots, six USB 2.0 ports, CPU FSB, multiplier, VCore, AGP voltage/Clock, DIMM voltage/Clock, all adjustable via BIOS. And on top of that you get a number of welcomed utilities ranging from Norton Internet Security 2003 to Gigabyte only products like the CIA and the MIB for CPU Intelligent Accelerator and Memory Intelligent Booster. A fine way to move forward if you want to build a rig using Intel's latest technology. The price asked, a cool £61.27+VAT.

One more for Gigabyte. The GA-K8NS is on sale at Dabs for £46.80+VAT. Not that expensive. The board sports the nForce 3 250 which is meant to give the best of the s754 Athlon 64 processor. Its elder brother, K8NS Pro got a 9/10 from Hexus with only very little separating them. What you get for that smallish price - three DIMM slots, ethernet LAN, a 7.1 sound channel solution from Realtek, same as for the above LGA775 motherboard. Two SATA connectors and two PATA ones. Five PCI slots and one AGP one. As for other Gigabyte product, you do get some interesting utilities. Have a look at the latest BIOS if you want to pump some more performance out of this product. The latest version was launched only three weeks ago. The K8NS holds pretty well against more expensive competition. Also overclocking is, from Hexus words, a joy using the software provided and some pretty nifty functions available to the board. Pretty much what you best can do in the socket 754 world. µ