[Dyre Straits]

I've been wanting to upgrade desperately. BUT, I've been in a position of not being able to take a full plunge and get an entirely new system. So, I was quite impressed when I saw the ABIT VT7 on the shelf at Micro Center for $79 plus tax. Take a look and some of its features:

ABIT VT7 WebSite


Supports Intel Pentium® 4/Celeron Socket 478 processors
(800/533/400MHz FSB)
- Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

VIA PT880 / VT8237 chipset
- Supports Hi-Speed Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0)
Four 184-pin DIMM sockets (Un-buffered Non-ECC DIMM)
- Supports Dual DDR 400/333/266 (Max. 4GB)

Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP 8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V)



It also has onboard 6-channel Audio with 5 separate connections; onboard LAN, and, for those who like it, SATA RAID.

I've not been a big fan of VIA, but, I understand they've made some big strides over the last couple of years.

So, any opinions?

I'll write more after I've done some more testing and upgrading to it. Presently, everything else in my sig is still current.....only this motherboard has changed.

EDIT: Just came across this fairly recent full review at TweakTown:

TweakTown - PT880 Done Right!