Its the start of another week, you've just got into work. What do u do now? Answer: Get a cuppa then sit on you bum and read some hardware reviews. If the boss moans tell him its for a good cause "Personal Development" ;)
MSI K7D Master-L Mainboard Dual MP
MSI has spruced up their excellent K7D Master with some extra hardware features, such as LAN, but more importantly for enthusiasts, the K7D-L now sports MSI's red PCB. They even managed to tweak performance slightly.
"Many people fail to see any reason to pay $600 for a mainboard, memory and processors when they can get a decent KT333 combo for under $300. Is building an SMP capable system worth all of the cash? It is really a matter of personal taste. SMP systems do tend to be more stable and perform better than their single-CPU cousins, but whether or not the extra stability and performance is worth an extra $300 can be debated forever."
View: MSI K7D Master-L Mainboard Dual MP @ ViperLair
Abit IT7 Review
The IT7 sure has a very unusual layout. The first thing that's immediately noticeable is the back panel featuring ports that we don't normally see there, and not featuring ports that we're so used to seeing in that spot. There are no PS/2, Serial or parallel ports- instead, you have six USB ports, two firewire ports and a few audio ports along with one NIC socket