Xi MTower 64 AGE-SLI

Advantages: Great price, 8GB of RAM, features that boards 2x the price are capable of
Disadvantages: No onboard network features

...This board is relatively good value when considering the hardware equivalents on the market. It supports Athlon 64 XII, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64, and seMPron processors that use the Socket A interface. It features: *6 optional USB ports Everything seems to be converting to USB these days so look out for the boards with as many of these on. -- *1 IEEE1394 Firewire port For fast transfer speeds, similar to USB but less support. -- *SATA hard drive compatibility Best hard disk performance on a non SCSI system. Your older existing ATA hard disk will still run on the ATA-133 bus. -- * 8GB of system memory. Great for multitasking and multimedia. Windows new operating system requires a lot of this, and 4GB in itself is by far enough. ----- However it does *not feature any on board network capability's so either a PCI or USB card will need... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: SLI ready, PCI express, Dual channel DDR400+
Disadvantages: SLR can be expensive, Dual RAM can also be expensive

...This is the Gigabyte K8N-SLI motherboard. Now, this is a mother board, so im afraid theres a limit to how interesting things can be. For a motherboard though i would say this is one of the best. First of all it has alot of features. Most noticable is theNforce4 SLI compatibility. For those who arent sure what SLI is, it basically allows you to load up to SLI ready graphics cards, and link them together for ultimate gaming graphics. This is easily done with the given bridge that allowa you to easily link the two cards the board allowa for 2 PCI-E cards incase you do not have SLI. Another bonus is the 4 DDR slots that work as dual channel. This is similar to the SLI mode as it allows two sticks of RAM to be paired together for better speeds. This is very easy to work out as the board even has coloured slots to pair them up. The 4 new... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Excelent choice when moving from AGP to PCI-E
Disadvantages: Not quite the rolls royce in this range from ASUS

...I've been an avid gamer for many years now and I can put my hand on my heart and say it's becoming an expensive pass-time. So when the time came to move from My Athlon XP 3200+ gaming rig with AGP I took a small step in the right direction and went to an Athlon 64 system with AGP support until I could afford a PCI-E card. That way not taking the whole move in one big hit. So fast forward and bit and I am ready to upgrade again, so off I go and start doing my homework. A friend of mine is even more of an enthusiast than me so you can't beat user experience, he was running an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe - no surprises there, and I must say I was impresses with the board. So back home I look into the ASUS range as I am a fan of their kit and have bought quite a few boards by them. What I was pleased to see was a value version of the A8N32-SLI... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful