This board managed a very good score in the high-end category, and thus gets the Runner-up position. It has a host of good features, including five PCI and four USB ports (two of the USB ports are built-in and there’s a connector for the other two). It has a detailed manual on the CD along with the drivers and Norton AntiVirus software, and comes with a separate quick start guide. The motherboard supports AGP 4x and UltraDMA 100, taking care of future upgrades and additions. It also comes with a DVO (Digital Video Out) slot. It does not have an AMR slot like most other boards we tested, but has a built-in network card instead. It lost a few points in driver installation, since it wasn’t automated.

Coming to performance, the board was average in the entry-level category, but stood among the toppers in the high-end category. It scored 64.5 out of 100 in entry-level, which was average. In high-end performance, it managed a frame rate of 43 in Indy3D, which almost equaled that of the winner ASUS CUSL2 (43.5). It also scored the highest in High-End Winstone99, which measures high-end application performance.

A price of Rs 7,950 makes this one a good choice in the high-end category, given its rich features and performance; but it’s not so lucrative at the entry level. This was the only motherboard that came with a three-year warranty.