Weekly Memory & Motherboard Price Guide: April 2001 1st Edition

Almost all Socket A's have fallen in price with the most significant drop being with the FIC AD11 AMD 760 motherboard. KT133 boards show some slight price drops as well as several boards which have not changed at all. Since we were not able to find prices for one of our KT133 recommended boards, the MSI K7T Pro2, we've chosen it's cousin the K7T Pro2A which differs only in that it uses the VT82C686B super south bridge for PCI/ISA integration. Almost all KT133A boards have also fallen in price including our recommended board, the Iwill KK266, which received top honors in our review. Most KM133 motherboards have also come down in price.

The DDR-powered AMD 760 and Ali Magik 1-based boards continue their plunge along with the prices of DDR memory although the drops are not quite as significant. Though we cannot make any recommendations for either AMD 760 or Ali Magik motherboards since the samples we have require more testing, we can say that Ali Magik boards have not been very impressive since our tests show that this platform is not yet mature for several reasons. Number one, this is Ali's first Athlon chipset and second it hasn't been available long enough for motherboard manufacturers to truly optimize for it as they have with the KT133/KT133A chipsets. We'll have more on the Ali Magik 1 boards in an upcoming Socket A roundup.