Pricey Foundations: 9 Boards For The Pentium 4

Asus P4T: High Performance

Board revision: 1.06

Bios: 1005 Beta 003 (15 July 2001)

First things first - the market leader in motherboards hasn't done badly with the Asus P4T. In the benchmark disciplines, the board performs head and shoulders above the rest. Not only that, but Asus clocks its FSB relatively low, without its performance suffering in the least. The FSB rate can be set (rather unprecisely) between 100 MHz and 133 MHz - the multiplier is adjustable between 10.0 and 20.0. CPU core voltage can be set between 1.750 V and 1.850 V. As we've seen on other boards from this manufacturer, clocking is done either via DIP switch or BIOS. To minimize electromagnetic radiation, Asus has placed the board on a large metal plate that ships with the P4T. This baby comes in different flavors - it's available with integrated sound chip, LAN controller or FireWire chip. It also comes in the Micro-ATX form for smaller cases. Despite its hefty price tag of over $150, the board provides an extraordinarily stable foundation for fast Intel Pentium 4 processors up to 2000 MHz.

One lonely voltage connector for the Pentium 4.

The remaining power connectors are on the edge of the board.