Evolution of the AMD platform

When AMD launched its Athlon processor two years ago, only one platform was available: its PC100 SDRAM-based AMD-750 chipset. In a similar fashion, only one platform was AMD's preferred solution for their "Thunderbird" Athlon processor, VIA's KT133 chipset (although AMD's 750 chipset and VIA's KX133 chipset were also available as short-term solutions). Today, there are over half a dozen choices available for AMD's latest processor, roughly half of these chipsets support DDR memory. This figure doesn't even include NVIDIA's upcoming nForce chipset, or VIA's KT266A chipset. Motherboards for both of these platforms will be available shortly.

While having multiple platforms on the market results in more choices for consumers (and ultimately, lower prices), this can also lead to more confusion if you don't know what you're looking for. "Should I purchase a DDR motherboard or one based on SDRAM? Is VIA's KT266 chipset for me or should I purchase an AMD-760 motherboard?" are questions we frequently receive. Each platform is available with multiple configurations and price points, making the choice even more complicated for consumers.

As you'd expect, each solution has its pros and cons: VIA's KT266 chipset offers good performance once the motherboard is properly setup and running with the proper BIOS, but early on it was criticized for its lack of performance and USB reliability was questionable at bus speeds above 138MHz. To address these issues VIA has recently released its KT266A chipset, but retail motherboards based on this chipset aren't available yet (nor has its long-term reliability been proven yet). In a similar fashion, ALi's MAGIK 1 DDR chipset was released earlier this year, but its initial performance was also lackluster. Like VIA, ALi has released a newer stepping of the MAGIK 1 North Bridge, but to our knowledge motherboards that utilize the new chip aren't available yet.

SiS's 735 chipset got everything right the first time, but in comparison to the others was late to market. As a result only one fully fledged SiS 735 motherboard is available on the market, the incredibly inexpensive ECS K7S5A. Products based on SiS 735 from ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are also in the works, but by the time they hit the market it may be too late. In contrast to the aforementioned chipsets, AMD's AMD-760 is the oldest platform available on the market and quite frankly in many ways it shows. Older AMD-760 motherboards only offer two DIMM sockets, and all AMD-760 motherboards tend to be a bit more expensive than DDR motherboards based on other AMD chipsets. But despite these shortcomings, AMD-760 is arguably still the most reliable platform overall on the market. Therefore, for the past month we've been working on rounding up and testing all the latest AMD-760 motherboards. In this article we'll highlight the positives and negatives of each of these motherboards to help you determine which product serves your needs best. Before we get started, we've provided this chart summarizing the basic features of each product included in this article:

	PCI/ISA/AMR	# of DIMMs	Onboard audio	Bus adjustment	Generation	Diagnostic LED	St.Price
ABIT KG7	6/0/0	4	No	Yes	2nd	No	$125
ASUS A7M266	5/0/1	2	Yes	Yes	1st	No	$147
DFI AK76-SN	5/0/1	2	No	Yes	2nd	No	$106
Epox 8K7A+	6/0/0	2	Yes (AC'97)	Yes	2nd	Yes	$128
FIC AD11	5/0/1	2	Yes (AC'97)	Yes (limited)	1st	No	$101
Gigabyte GA-7DXR	5/0/1	3	Yes (Creative/AC'97)	Yes	2nd	No	$141
MSI K7 Master-S	5/0/1	2	Yes (AC'97)	Yes (limited)	1st	Yes	$252

Unlike motherboards we've tested based on ALi or VIA chipsets, performance of AMD-760 motherboards is fairly even from board to board (much like motherboards based on Intel's chipsets). We've mentioned this trait to FiringSquad readers in the news comments and email numerous times, and to be honest this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone -- who else would know more about building a solid platform around a CPU than the company that designed the processor itself. One attribute that we did find interesting however was that the newer, second generation AMD-760 motherboards tended to perform a bit faster than their older counterparts in our tests.