Weekly Motherboards & Video Price Guide: February 2003 2nd Edition

	Product	Current Price	S+H	Week Change	Link	BizRate
Motherboard NVIDIA
	nForce ASUS A7N266-VM	$71.99	$0.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 Abit NF7-S	$125.00	$0.00	$-1.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 ASUS A7N8X	$118.99	$0.00	$-1.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe	$144.99	$1.00	$0.00	GoogleGear	Compare Prices
	nForce2 Chaintech 7NJS Zenith	$168.00	$0.00	$-10.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 Epox 8RDA+	$112.00	$5.00	$-10.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 LeadTek K7NCR18D-Pro	$110.00	$0.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	nForce2 Soltek 75FRN	$100.00	$0.50	N/A	GoogleGear	Compare Prices
Motherboard SIS AMD
	735 ECS K7S5A	$58.00	$0.00	N/A	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	735 ECS K7S5A Pro	$60.00	$0.00	$-2.50	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	745 ASUS A7S333	$65.75	$-0.00	N/A	AllStarShop	Compare Prices
	745 MSI Ultra	$70.00	$0.00	N/A	PCProgress	Compare Prices
Motherboard VIA AMD
	KM266 ECS K7VMM+	$61.00	$0.00	N/A	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT333 Albatron KX400+ Pro	$68.99	$0.50	$-0.50	GoogleGear	Compare Prices
	KT333 ASUS A7V333	$84.99	$0.00	$-9.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT333 MSI KT3 Ultra2	$75.99	$0.00	$0.00	CompuBuzz	Compare Prices
	KT333 Soyo Dragon Ultra	$131.99	$1.00	$-6.01	GoogleGear	Compare Prices
	KT400 Abit AT7-MAX2	$165.00	$0.00	N/A	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 ASUS A7V8X	$106.99	$0.00	$-11.01	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 Chaintech 7VJL Deluxe	$104.00	$0.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 Epox 8K9A2+	$109.00	$5.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 Gigabyte 7VAXP	$110.00	$0.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 MSI KT4 Ultra FISR	$135.00	$5.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 Shuttle AK37GT	$85.00	$0.00	$0.00	NewEgg	Compare Prices
	KT400 Soltek 75FRV	$83.00	$0.50	N/A	GoogleGear	Compare Prices
	KT400 Soyo Dragon Ultra	$111.99	$0.00	$0.00	CompuBuzz	Compare Prices

This week's AMD motherboards proved more interesting than the Intel based boards. For the most part, KT333 based chipsets dropped at least 10% in price, even if our price engine does not entirely reflect that. (Our engine updates every week, but we only post motherboard guides every 2 weeks.) KT400 based motherboards also show little or no change, when in fact they have dropped approximately 10-15% as well since our last guide.

nForce2 boards have retained their price since debut for the most part. Without any competition, these boards are really the only choice for anyone considering an AMD based platform right now. Specifically, the EPoX 8RDA+ dropped in price again to become our AMD motherboard pick of the week. This board is priced aggressively with EPoX's own KT400 based chipset, but as we know from several benchmarks and tests of the nForce2 chipset, the additional few dollars spent on the 8RDA+ is money well spent. Unfortunately ASUS's A7N8X Deluxe model has moved very little since introduction. The 30USD difference in price between these two models seems unpromising unless you plan on investing in a serial ATA drive any time soon.

However, if you have money to burn for serial ATA we recommend rethinking your decision and buying a faster processor instead. The performance increase does not seem to warrant the extremely high price tag just yet, so money spent on a Barton processor will most likely result in a greater boost in performance.

We also included a few budget AMD boards this week, since there seems to be some extremely good deals if you plan on assembling that long desired Linux box or second workstation. With AMD XP 2100+ Thoroughbred B CPU's retailing for under 100USD, and DDR dropping to under 60 bucks for 512MB of PC2700, it becomes almost trivial to construct a sub 400USD workstation. We recently put together a small cluster of 3 ECS K7VMM+ based FreeBSD machines here in the lab with the final cost of each at 360USD each. Even though RAM and processors continue to drop like a rock, AMD systems are still excellent buys for this week.