ABIT AG8

Advantages New chipset, and processor socket.
Disadvantages Isn't as advanced as it's made out

...For a new LGA775 Pentium 4 motherboard boasting raft of high-speed technological highlights, Abit's AG8 has a remarkably short and demure name. While I'm not overly averse to product names using the words 'hyper', 'ultra', 'mega' and 'superbadass', it's rare to see a new product that isn't shouting about it's various innovations. The AG8 supports the new Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 CPUs, so the most immediate noticable aspect of it's appearnce is the huge buckle-like 'socket' itself. The AG8 uses the Intel 915P chip for the Northbridge, bt it is buried under a chunky heatsink with a 40mm fan attached to it. The 915 is the cutdown version 925, as the 865 was the cutdown version of the 875P, and the Pvariant denotes a lack of on-board graphics. While this isn't a serious omission, the AG8 also lacks the next iteration of on-board sound... Read review

Advantages Solid, good features, reliable,
Disadvantages Price

...in the manual. The only problem i had with this board is setting the bios up to the CPU, every time I went to save the changes to the bios, it just hung, which was a bit scary, the solution to this was to flash the bios to the latest version, (this is a frequen error apparantly) Everything is fine with it then, it saved first time without crashing. Not quite sure if the board supports SATA DVD/CD drives, i have one attached, and it comes up with errors every now and then, but this could be down to windows too, so will reserve judgement on this one, and as I can use the IDE connection to attach a DVD writer to anyway, this is not too much of a pain, but could do with being clarified by the manufacturer. From the Abit site LGA775 CPU Socket - Designed for Intel® 90nm Prescott LGA775 processors with 800/533MHz FSB - Supports Intel... Read review