High end Guide

Dual AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz
Now that the AMD-760 MP chipset is available on a few motherboards and it has proved to be a very stable platform, we are selecting some dual Athlon madness for our higher end choice.

or
Single AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz
Even though it's the fastest Athlon available, it still comes at a very low price compared to what we used to see for higher end processors just a few months ago. We could have chosen a similar performing Pentium 4 but with almost no applications or games showing big performance gains, we preferred going with the Athlon instead. It's important to notice however that the fastest P4s are starting to show more noticeable gains, so it's a matter of time until higher speeds are achieved when the Pentium 4 will finally show off what it's made of.

Tyan Thunder K7 Dual
The first widely available motherboard using the AMD-760 MP chipset and probably one of the few we will see until the end of the year. This motherboard mostly aimed to the server market boasts among other things: Dual Athlon support, 4 DDR memory slots angled at 45 degrees, two 10/100 Ethernet controllers, on-board ATI Rage XL graphics, and a built-in Ultra160 SCSI controller.

There are a few things to consider with the Thunder K7 however, as you would expect after hearing about all the built-in features, it's not a cheap motherboard at all but it does make a perfect companion for the two Athlons you would be getting, not to mention it wouldn't need any add in cards for making a server out of it. If you are really considering this board you should know it's rock stable but beware that it needs some special treatment such as registered DDR memory modules and a non standard power supply.

MSI K7 Master
Although there are quite a few good options for Socket A motherboards, the main reason we chose the K7 Master over the rest of the pack was because of the excellent stability and performance offered. It's based on the AMD 760 chipset that gives you the option of using DDR memory, for some reason however most motherboards based on this chip only have two memory slots, probably for stability reasons. If you want built-in SCSI, MSI also offers the K7 Master-S that comes with the Adaptec AIC-7899 Ultra 160 SCSI adapter. If you are interested in having the best overclocking features, we have heard really good things about the ASUS A7V266 and the recently released Soyo K7V Dragon.

1GB to 512mb PC2100 DDR Memory

Depending on how much money you want to spend and what is going to be the main purpose of the machine you're building, you should make a choice between 1GB to 512mb. DDR Memory prices have considerably gone down over the past couple of months so you might want to take advantage of that. If you are building a machine based around the Tyan motherboard you should buy registered memory modules which should add a few dollars to the cost.

Hercules Game Theater XP

The new wave of soundcards has arrived and it looks like Creative is finally getting some tough competition after Aureal went down. Surprisingly enough, most new offerings are based on Sensaura and Cirrus chips. In the case of the Game Theater XP, it's based on the ------------------- chip that offers ...................

The reason we chose Hercules offering over the trusty Phillips Acoustic Edge was because of the few extras that come with it, ................ If you are not interested on those additions, you can safely go with the

Videologic Sirocco Crossfire

Although not a 5.1 system, these speakers are by far the most poweful and all around the best thing I've heard on the PC. The only speakers that could make some competition up to the Crossfire would be the Klipsch Promedia's which are a hundred dollars cheaper, those could also be considered a safe buy but believe me when I tell you this system is worth every cent.

Iwill KK266

Another Socket A motherboard featured on this update of our buying guide. The Iwill KK266, our pick for the low-end machine, makes good use of the VIA KT133A chipset that only supports PC133 memory but should be more than enough for your needs. The KK266 is a very stable board but still has one of the lowest prices on the market, it doesn't lack overclocking features, something you will sure want to look into.