The ASUS Cross II Formula receives the award as the Best Performer of all the AMD boards. This is totally a hardcore overclocker board. It comes in a great package and everything about it exudes qual¬i ty - everything from the BIOS to the quality of the board and the bundle supplied. All this comes at a price of Rs 15,450. The most impressive value for money board has to be the Jetway HA07-LF with its unbeatable price of just Rs 6,750. A good open layout, great onboard performance, even better overclocking features and it also supports CrossFire.

The HA06 is another similar feature-filled board based on the AMD 780G chipset with CrossFire but only a little slower than the HA07. The HA06 is priced at just Rs 5,500.
Another really good motherboard that comes at a fairly low price is the Biostar GeForce 8200 M2+ that sells for just Rs 3,900. The board doesn't come with CrossFire but it makes an excellent buy for some¬one who wants a really cheap motherboard for an entry level AMD processor. The Palit AA-780G is another cheap board available for Rs 200 less than the Biostar GeForce 8200 M2+. It's an equally compact board that is left behind a bit in the gaming performance.



The MSI DKA790GX Platinum is the next overall best board. This is yet another board powered by AMD's 790GX. At Rs 9,600, it's more affordable than the ASUS Crosshair Formula II and the ASUS M3N¬HT Deluxe, performs almost as good as them, has a pretty good BIOS and a clean layout. A similar conclusion like the boards for the Intel platform can be reached by just looking at the performance figures for the AMD platform boards.

The performance that really matters to a lot of the people using computers today- everything to do with destop applications like browsers, mail clients and office suites, there isn't a whole new world of performance waiting you while upgrading to a better motherboard. A motherboard is something that you look for as a base to build an entire system on. Features, reliabil¬ity and the ability to upgrade and expand are the key - not per¬formance. This is clearly seen in this test where we see boards priced at two times higher perform more or less the same way as their cheaper counterparts. A brief guide to what processor and motherboard you should go for lies ahead.