For audio, ECS has gone with a sound solution - the Elite PCI Audio CMI 8738. This chip provides SoundBlaster 16 compatibility, but also offers the 3D surround schemes of Aureal's A3D standard via software. This sound chip can support four speakers and with the right bracket can be hooked up to the S/PDIF port on the motherboard and connected directly to a home theater system. Certainly this is a strong innovation in integrated board sound quality, although this setup will eat into the CPU's processing cycles as it deals with the increased audio load

Aside from the sound, another interesting feature of the P6IWT-A+ is a neat little feature called "Debug Master". Yep, this is that little seven-segment display we told you about.

Displaying two hexadecimal numbers, installation errors are now a cinch to troubleshoot. No more Morse code beeps to deal with. Just get the number, look it up in the manual, and problem solved!

While the main audience for this motherboard may lock it in a case and never open it again, it still may find its way into some inexpensive secondary systems for many people, and this feature will appeal to that secondary computer type audience. Even those who are ready to make that jump into building their own PCs for the first time will find the Debug Master an impressive aid to making the whole process easier

The P6IWT-A+ is a relatively painless board to install.

Only requiring some RAM and a CPU, the hardware part only takes a couple of minutes to configure and setup. Installing all of the drivers however may take a little while however, as the video, audio, modem etc all have drivers that need to be installed.

Refreshingly, the manual for this motherboard is very well written, and easily understandable. Devoting a couple of pages in the front to the different features and possible upgrades was a good idea, as it gives the consumer a very good idea of what s/he is getting. The manual then goes through all of the connectors with full-page illustrations and is very simple to follow.

While many of us don't even look at the manual before installing a motherboard, it does make a good reference and clearly explains all of the BIOS options.