Current Cost of Motherboard: $185
Months on List: 2
Price Change: -$5
Company Web Site: www.abit.com.tw

Although we keep hearing rumors of a mPGA 478 successor to the venerable ASUS P4T, we've still got to choose from among the available hardware. For a performance microPGA 478, RDRAM-based Pentium 4 motherboard, this is a bit harder than you would think. Most prominent manufacturers like ASUS have run with the new i845 chipset and are leaving the i850 alone for the time being. One notable exception is ABIT and with their new TH7II-RAID. To call this board feature-rich is an understatement and it includes 4 RIMM sockets, 1 AGP 4X slot, 1 CNR and 5 PCI slots, ABIT's powerful SoftMenu III BIOS for overclocking and tweaking, and a HighPoint IDE RAID controller thrown in for good measure. For our money, the TH7II-RAID is currently the best Pentium 4 mPGA 478/RDRAM solution and makes a great fit on our high-end system.

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Current Cost of Motherboard: $150
Months on List: 2
Price Change: -$10
Company Web Site: www.abit.com.tw

The most important factor to consider for our AMD motherboard is compatibility with the new Athlon XP. This is a bit hazy even with newer products, but we were able to confirm Athlon XP support with last month's pick, the ABIT KG7-RAID. Since it uses the AMD 761 chipset, this is not surprising, and we also saw quite a few Athlon XP configurations with this motherboard used as the base. The ABIT KG7-RAID features 4 DIMM sockets and supports up to 4 GB of system memory! The board also includes 1 AGP and 6 PCI slots, along with ABIT's trademark SoftMenu III BIOS. The HighPoint IDE RAID controller is just icing on the cake to this high performance and fully-featured board. Please note that although it does have 4 DIMM sockets, some care must be taken if you need to use all 4 at the same time. Please consult with your vendor prior to purchasing DDR memory and ensure that the correct type (registered) is included to fully make use of the quad-memory sockets. If you use standard unbuffered DDR memory, then only two slots can be used and maximum memory falls to 2 GB.