Introduction

Welcome back to another edition of the Price Guides. For those of you who need some advice on new motherboards, we have a complete look at today's market segment along with our recommended picks. As another reminder, the RealTime Price Guides is leaving the beta testing phase, and moving into production real soon! Please send us your comments and suggestions on how we can improve our engine! Of course, you can always view the existing release of the engine here. Furthermore, you can view the still beta QuickSearch RSS feed forum thread here.

This has been an excellent month for AMD users as nForce4 boards are finally starting to show some availability on the A04 silicon and VIA's PCIe solution is also shipping. Some of the late blooming nForce3 motherboards are also picking up in availability – which is important if you aren't ready to make the transition to PCIe just yet. We also have details on availability for next generation Intel motherboards.

Athlon 64 PCIe

nForce4 motherboard options went from 2 to 20 almost overnight. ASUS and Gigabyte managed to control the entire nForce4 market for the month of January (with some help from Chaintech as well), but the heyday of AMD AGP is clearly coming to an end. Pricing on the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe [RTPE: A8N-SLI Deluxe] has dropped nearly $20 in the last week alone, and other comparable boards. All three Tier 1 manufacturers have SLI boards available now, but the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe is still clearly the leader in the price/performance category for now.

That being said, don't forget to check out Wes's review of DFI's attempts to rise into the elite nForce4 club. Although the SLI LanParty board isn't available yet, our merchants do show it preordering. For those of you who like to live dangerously, you may wish to check out the DFI nForce4 LanParty UT-D [RTPE: LanParty UT Ultra-D], which Wesley mentioned could be modified into an "SLI-like" motherboard very easily. Of course, you won't get any driver support from NVIDIA, and if you feel the need to run an SLI configuration, you may be better off paying the extra $25 for the rock solid ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe.

However, for those no-nonsense types who still want the versatility of PCIe, there are some pretty awesome choices. The veteran of value nForce4 motherboards, Chaintech, has two offerings available right now – both with reasonably good price points. Chaintech's nForce4 Ultra motherboard is selling at the same price as most of the other nForce4 4X boards right now, and they clearly have a competitive solution for the price point.

Don't rule out VIA based PCIe just yet. The K8T890 motherboards have started shipping en masse, with the exception of the ASUS AV8-E Deluxe [RTPE: A8V-E Deluxe] that hit the market a little bit early; certainly par for the course at ASUS. We will have more details and benchmarks on K8T890 in the coming weeks.

Just to give a great example of how some motherboards like the A8N-SLI Deluxe are affecting the retail market space, take a look at how the price of this motherboard has dropped – particularly since the New Year.

Athlon 64 AGP

For those of you still in AGP land, don't worry as nForce3 and K8T800 still have a lot of life in them. Tier 2 manufacturers that missed the nForce4 boat have redesigned many of their existing nForce3 solutions and re-released them on Socket 939 and 754. The most interesting case in point is the Abit NF8 [RTPE: Abit NF8] – a sub $100 motherboard that should give MSI and Chaintech a run for their money.

Also notice that the Tier 1 guys pretty much dominate the Socket 939 nForce3 sector right now, but their grip is slowly loosening to some of the more aggressive Tier 2 manufacturers like Abit and DFI. Unfortunately, you still pay through the nose for AGP on Socket 939, and PCIe video cards are generally cheaper in the mid-range. If you don't need to provide legacy support for your existing video card, you are almost certainly better off buying a Socket 939 nForce4 or Socket 754 K8T800 motherboard.

VIA just kind of fell into the value roll for Socket 939 over the last few weeks. If you don't overclock, but still need a stable feature packed board,

MSI's Neo2-F [RTPE: MS-6702E-020] is pretty unsurpassed in price/performance. Coupled with a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+, you'll have a nearly unbeatable $250 combo.

EPoX and Biostar are also attempting to break into this nForce3-Socket 939 market, if ever slowly. DFI will also have an offering that will ship within the next few weeks.

Other AMD

Athlon XP motherboards are still in vogue these days, although it's getting harder and harder to justify why. With VIA left as the only active participant in the Socket 462 market, your options these days are very limited.

There is still a ton of inventory on the nForce2 end of things – particularly for the single channel motherboards. However, prices have gone up every model and the nForce2 IGP is getting a little long in the teeth. IGP doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now, considering the dirt cheap prices on NVIDIA TurboCache cards, but we will leave that analysis to next week's GPU guide. Again, the reasons for sticking with Socket 462 are fading fast.

KT880 is clearly the most mature solution on the Socket 462 market, but motherboard vendors are somewhat sporadic. Overclocking Athlon XP mobility chips on some of the Tier 2 motherboards probably won't yield expected results, but the Tier 1 components are selling at nearly the same price of the Athlon 64 components. Take our advice – stick with Athlon 64. If anything, the announcements of Windows x64 RC2 and Intel's unilateral support for 64-bit should be enough to sway nay sayers into the 64-bit camp.

ASUS (again) pretty much dominates the Athlon XP camp with the A7V880 [RTPE: A7V880]. The KT880 stands as the most mature and one of the cheapest Athlon XP motherboards available.

Given that there will be no more revisions from anyone on Socket 462 core logic, it's pretty safe to say that you definitely want to buy a motherboard that has some longevity in it if you don't want to get stuck "eBay'ing" your Athlon XP in a few months. One trick that we like to do is frequently check the number of "refurbished" items at resellers. If you see several refurbished motherboards for a particular SKU, people are obviously returning the motherboards for one reason or another.

PCIe Intel

Intel users, unfortunately, don't get as many options in motherboards like the AMD guys this month. VIA's PT894 launch a few days ago indicated the chipset performed fairly similarly to Intel's 915P with the additional feature of SLI, but it might be too little, too late. Don't be surprised if Intel announces their next generation chipset before VIA's solution even hits shelves. However, with evidence suggesting that Intel might weigh more of its focus on Tier 1 motherboard manufacturers in 2005, PTxxx might be the only chipset that we see on motherboards from some of the better overclocking and feature manufacturers.

Prices being what they are, you are certainly much better off buying a Socket 775 solution over a Socket 478 solution these days. The older 865/875 motherboards are approaching their two-year anniversary – and unless you really need AGP support, you will pay more for a Socket 478 processor. Even this argument is somewhat flawed as Abit and MSI both have reasonably inexpensive Socket 775 motherboards with 865PE northbridges (and AGP).

Several manufacturers are still pursuing the lost cause that is 925X/E, so they are at least worth mentioning this time around. The cheapest 925X boards start at $160, which really doesn't make any sense, considering the nearly identical performance of so many 915P boards.

If you really need a Pentium 4 motherboard, there are a few options that we recommend highly. The EPoX EP-5EPA+ [RTPE: EP-5EPA+] won a silver award in our 915P motherboard roundup several months ago, but it still packs the mightiest performance per dollar today. However, the excellent ASUS P5GD1 (non-deluxe) also has some great features plus the flexibility of DDR1 memory.

If we look at the P5GD1 trend over the last few months, we see that the motherboard has clearly made some progress in dipping to an affordable level. Most other 915 motherboards have varied very little since September – which is unfortunate for the consumer. MSI's Neo2 Platinum [RTPE: MS-7028-030] also offers a solid feature set albeit at a higher price than the alternatives.

Other Deals

We wouldn't be able to write a guide without mentioning some of the other oddities in the motherboard land. Given the amount of Pentium M attention lately, some people may want to persue Prescott's little brother with a little more enthusiasm. Our analysis does not put the Pentium M ahead of the Athlon 64 (or even the Pentium 4) in most instances, and you still pay through the nose for hardware. DFI and AOpen both have first generation motherboards available, and the premiums on these boards are outrageous.

Prices have remained stagnant on both boards for several weeks and we probably won't see any change until the next generation motherboards start shipping.

Although SIS clearly lost the "oomph" they once had, we have seen some generally favorable products from them in recent history. The Price Engine bot picked up a lonely Foxconn SKU when searching for the SIS 755FX in retail space – the Foxconn 755FXK8AA-8EKRS [RTPE: 755FXK8AA-8EKRS].

At under $100 for a Socket 939 motherboard, Foxconn probably has a winner on their hands. However, it's going to take some more testing and benchmarks on our behalf to assure that the retail SIS 755FX boards have what it takes to stack up against nForce3 and K8T800.