Introduction

Once you have decided what chipset you want to run on a motherboard, the next big decision is choosing exactly what motherboard to buy. You really have two options; first you can go with a cheaper brand and get a motherboard that simply brings the chipset to your hands in the cheapest possible way. Or on the end of the scale you could turn around and spend some extra dollars and purchase a high-end motherboard with the whole shebang.

If you decide that the latter is the road you want to take, you might as well make sure you're getting the best for your buck. If you're hunting a new motherboard to go with that brand spanking new Athlon 64 processor and you've chosen the K8T800 chipset from VIA then we have exactly what you want. If you're talking about performance motherboards that have all the features you want plus more there are three motherboard brands that stand out from the pack and we have them here today.

First up is the Gigabyte K8VNXP motherboard with its gigantic box and just as large package. The motherboard comes with everything you would want and a little bit extra to give your system that rock solid stability that we all want.

We also intend to find out if red is indeed the faster color when we test the MSI K8T Neo motherboard. This particular motherboard was released with the Athlon 64 processor itself. So we are thinking AMD must have a lot of confidence in it.

Finally we have the very well known ABIT KV8 MAX3 motherboard which was used in our Performance PC article not too long ago. ABIT's latest motherboard labeled with the "MAX3" tag brings all the features to a motherboard which many crave. In an effort to step further out from the crowd, ABIT has also included such things as SecureIDE - it's little things like this that give users a reason to go out and buy the ABIT brand over the others.

Gigabyte, MSI and ABIT are all massive contenders in the market and there is a reason to their continued success. Let's find out what all you performance driven people should be spending your money on in our VIA K8T800 performance motherboard shootout.

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