The End User Pays: 13 Boards With Intel 845GE/PE

DFI NB78-HL: Meager And Low-priced

Always the same: the DFI's packaging is well past its prime and the user doesn't notice.

A glance at the DFI NB78-HL: Frugal fare for a penny-pinching price. Other manufacturers are asking almost double as much.

A significant factor in choosing the DFI board would be its extremely low price tag: for 129 euros, the customer gets a board with the Intel 845PE chipset. The competition in this test line-up is asking at least 200 euros. That said, the equipment has been whittled down to just a few features: besides the 100 Mbit Realtek network chip, the board has stereo audio - and that's the lot. For users who don't want or use any extras (!) it's certainly an adequate configuration. The low price naturally brings savings, including an uncomfortable BIOS update that has to be done in the old DOS environment with cryptic file labels. Worth a mention are the six PCI slots that are very helpful in view of the sparse equipment for (subsequent) expansion. The board achieves only below-average performance, which is not the end of the world considering the sensationally low price. Anyone looking for a really cheap P4 board with hyperthreading support can't do any better than the DFI.

What you get with the DFI NB78-HL.