Anand heeft een part 1 van zijn "Next Generation Motherboard Platforms" online gezet. Zoals gezegd gaat deel 1 over Athlon planken, namelijk de AMD Fester reference bord, de Gigabyte GA-7IX en de FIC SD11. Hier heb je een gedeelte, klik hier voor de rest van de editorial.
For overclockers, you can expect to see the return of the race for the most overclockable motherboard. There are a few smaller motherboard manufacturers that will be coming out with "overclockable" Athlon motherboards that simply support more FSB settings but, the true trick will lie in the ability to control the clock multiplier of the Athlon CPU. This is definitely possible, and it is only a matter of time before we see a motherboard that either ships with support for such a modification or ships with the modification module itself.Stability will be key to the success of Athlon motherboards, being able to deliver the proper amount of current to the processor and making sure that the signal's integrity remains strong are very important factors. This will be accomplished by using high quality components and a superior QA testing methodology, so what motherboards are there to look out for?
By the end of this year, you will have seen at least some information on a few very hot (supposedly) Athlon boards, including the elusive ASUS board as well as boards from Tyan and AOpen. The latter two should be very interesting, as we've only seen a handful of AOpen boards that were truly inferior in quality, and judging from what Tyan was saying about their upcoming Athlon motherboard, it should be a winner as well.
Both of those companies have consistently produced very solid motherboards, but also worth noting is that they both have traditionally produced inferior products (when compared to their usual standards) when dealing with non-Intel chipsets. AOpen has gotten much better about the quality of their VIA based motherboards as we've can see by their latest Apollo Pro 133 based offering, and we are beginning to see the same from Tyan. It seems like most motherboard manufacturers are coming to the conclusions that going Intel isn't always the best option.
Het volgende deel zal overigens over de i820 moederborden gaan, ben benieuwd 
