Summary: Good Concepts Deliver Good Results

Predictably, the two motherboards from Gigabyte and MSI showed no noticeable omissions or defects; they also demonstrated good performance, along with "best of breed" built-ins and add-ons.

By contrast, Jetway's motherboard manifested numerous failings. Taken individually, any of these would be tolerable; however, taken together, they raise serious doubts about quality. The vendor should make some quick fixes to put things right. If they do, they could have a solid contender, because the Jetway board is technically on a par with the Gigabyte and MSI offerings, and less costly as well.

In the first round of this series, we also give the nForce4 motherboards high marks across the board (Jetway's glitches had nothing to do with the chipset). Ambitious users should be every bit as satisfied with an NVIDIA chipset as with its Intel counterpart. In our next article in this series, we'll tackle a horde of 955X motherboards, raising - and answering - the question about which chipset and which vendor together offer the best overall motherboard.