The four horsemen may be saddling up and Gozer the Gozerian might soon appear, but that doesn't mean it's all bad news. With people digging in the couch crevices for dropped coins to build a new system, AMD's back on the menu again. Don't believe us? ...

Thus, we dusted off our benchmarks to look at MSI's DKA790GX Platinum. The board features integrated graphics with the option for hybrid CrossFire mode. Unfortunately, the add-in card must be equally as weak as the integrated part, so don't expect ...

Rifling through the box that the Intel DX58SO "Smackover" board came in, we were surprised not to find "love" and "hate" brass knuckles, because the motherboard definitely conjures feelings of both extremes. If you think we're being disrespectful, ...

Good performance with the safe embrace of the Intel name

Four DIMM slots and funky SATA ports make us mad. Very mad

If you think we're being disrespectful, just take one look at the board's SATA ports. That will tell you that somebody at Intel still doesn't know that today's graphics cards are big, huge, honking affairs. Since Intel oriented all the SATA ports ...

Motherboards can't just sit quietly in your case and service your parts anymore. Today, motherboards also must advertise to the entire world that you have one badass system. Hoping to outdo all others, DFI's LAN Party UT X58 Core i7 motherboard ...

True tri-SLI support ; all SATA ports are forward-facing

Minimal BIOS tweaking from inside Windows ; no X-Fi mobo support

With tri-SLI as one possible config, DFI also properly laid out the SATA ports. All eight of the SATA ports on the board are accessible even with three huge GPUs in place. Another two eSATA ports are available on the backplane, too

To run Asus's $400 Rampage II Extreme board you'd have to be either extreme or the world's biggest poseur. How extreme would you have to be? You'd have to be the type of person who boils liquid helium atop his CPU to keep it cool. And because you can ...

If you like adjusting BIOS settings such as CPU Differential Amplitude, the Extreme is for you

Turbo mode doesn't work correctly, and the toggle switch is difficult to use

OK, but what if you're just a poseur? Don't worry, you're set, too. Just fire up the OS applet, set your 3.2GHz Core i7-965 to "i7-crazy-4.0," and you're good to go. Now people will think you're an extreme overclocker when all you did was let the ...

An eclipse occurs when one celestial body obscures another. When MSI stuck its X58 motherboard with that moniker, we wondered just what it wanted to hide. Our guess is it's the fact that the board supports ATI's CrossFire X. Despite the Eclipse's ...

Tri-SLI capable, six DIMM slots, and no X-Fi activation required

Questionable placement of third x16 slot ; flaky USB support

Right now, it's difficult to compare the performance of the three X58-based boards we've tested, as it's challenging to make sure the boards are all set to the same specs. We attribute most of the performance differences we've seen to how each vendor ...

Asus's P6T Deluxe isn't the most over-the-top Core i7 board we've tested, but it certainly has a leg up on Intel's bare-bones DX58SO. For one thing, it finally brings us graphics reunification by supporting both two-card SLI and CrossFire X ...

Graphics reunification, six DIMMs, and a nifty external LCD display

BIOSes and applications are still a little rough around the edges

One thing we did like about the Intel board's BIOS was the ability to set the individual Turbo mode settings. Asus forces you to adjust the settings with the Asus TurboV utility, but we couldn't set each core separately. That made it difficult to ...

Pardon us, but crowing that your integrated graphics chip is better than your competitor's integrated graphics chip is a bit like bragging that your D is better than your friend's D-. As sad as that is, it's the tack AMD is taking with its 790GX ...

Scales from integrated to full-tilt CrossFire support

Poor SATA port placement ; BIOS disables USB keyboard support by default

The 790GX does support a hybrid mode, which allows you to pair an equally weak Radeon HD 3400-class GPU with the board. By adding the subpar performance of the Radeon to the integrated graphics, you immediately realize you should have purchased a ...

It's official: People who buy motherboards with mainstream chipsets such as the P45 don't want to pay for DDR3. At least, that's what it seems like to us. Asus's impressive Maximus II Formula is the third P45-based board we've tested, and not one of ...

Tons of SATA ports, some X-Fi support, an eye-pleasing color scheme

Pricey ; we couldn't enable the EAX4 modes

In hardware features, it's close, but we give the edge to the MIIF, with its eight SATA ports and superior audio. We also prefer its ADI-based codecs and drivers over Realtek's. We've been worried about ADI software support since the company quit the ...

If you don't just like Gigabit ports-you love them- Gigabyte's GA-EP45-DQ6 is the motherboard for you. This mobo has four Gigabit ports that can be teamed together for one seriously fat-ass network connection. Elsewhere, the board is typical Gigabyte ...

Healthy dose of PCI-E slots and well-labeled USB and FireWire headers

Performance lags behind other P45-based motherboards

Although it lagged behind in a few benchmarks, this is one of the nicest P45 boards we've tested

We admit it, sexy chipsets such as Nvidia's nForce 790i SLI Ultra and Intel's X48 get all the ink, but in reality, most of the world runs on plain-vanilla chipsets such as Intel's new P45. And the truth is, you don't necessarily give up performance or ...

MSI upadate utility makes driver and BIOS updates a snap

Temperature gauge is loud and annoying

The P45 chipset supports 1,600MHz front-side-bus CPUs-albeit unofficially; it's a moot point, however, as we don't expect to see a rash of 1,600 FSB procs for desktop use. The chipset can utilize either DDR2 or DDR3; the P45 Platinum uses DDR2. For ...