Gigabyte GA-7N400V-L - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 IGP

Advantages: Supports fast CPU's (upto Athlon 3200+), Crammed with features
Disadvantages: None really

...and allowing for high-speed computing thanks to the NVIDIA nForce™2 Ultra 400 platform, allowing for the Athlon XP Barton 3200+'s to be used to their full potential. Thanks to the dual channel DDR controller your computer has a lot more power (and if you wish to you can have 3GB of fast memory!!) the AGP8X graphics interface means you are able to use the best graphics cards on this, and will be able to enjoy thrilling games such as Doom3 in all their glory (or gory!). 5 PCI slots are included, which allows plenty of room for other cards to be inserted. This is quite a high number, especially as the motherboard is already crammed with so many other good features. Dual LAN is included, so is IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and the latest USB 2.0 allowing fast transfer of data and enables the use of the latest peripherals. Serial ATA and IDE RAID allow you... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: price, reliability, on board graphics
Disadvantages: none

...Great cheap nForce2 motherboard that comes complete with onboard LAN, onboard sound, and more importantly onboard Geforce 4 graphics. Also comes with TV Out. You can if you like add your own graphics card via the AGP 8x slot. Supports Athlon processors up to 3.0Mhz and can support DDR400 memory (but only if you add a separate graphics card into the AGP slot, otherwise you'll need to use DDR333). The great thing about this card is that everything is onboard without the need to purchase extras. The onboard Geforce 4 graphics although not state of the art will be sufficient for most users unless you're a really avid 3D gamer. Although, of couse, you can always add a separate card at a later date. Sound is produced onboard by a 6-channel processor which produces great 5.1 surround sound, so no real need to buy a separate sound... Read review

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Advantages: Dual Channel Memory Controller, Sound-Storm with digital output, Serial ATA support, Great Overclocking
Disadvantages: South-bridge can sometimes get a little warm

...great feature is the fact that there is what is replacing the IDE connection for hard-drives and slowly optical drives inbuilt into this motherboard - SERIAL ATA. Serial ATA is a new technology designed to give better performance and make drives even easier to install. Instead of having a "master" and "slave" scenario like the IDE channels, Serial has just the 1 Drive allocation, thus removing the need for jumpers and configuration. Serial ATA support is supplied via the Silcon Image SR3112 controller and supports single drives and 2 drives in Raid 0 and raid 1 configuration. Raid 0 is where 2 identical drives - in the case seagate 200 Gb drives "look" as if they are 1 huge 400 Gb drive with the read and write speed increased as the data is written to each drive alternatively - i.e odd blocks on drive A, even on Drive B. Windows does... Read review

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