K8T800 SOCK754 MAX-3GB 3DDR ATX5PCI AGP8X USB Snd Lan Sata-r 800M

Rating:
Summary: Pretty impressive overall, but lets you down in RAM handling
Review: This motherboard is pretty impressive overall - made to take AMD's 64 bit CPUs, it will provide a stable platform for most of your applications. All the built in sockets (USB, firewire, ethernet) work very nicely. ABIT has been providing regular BIOS updates that are not just for show, they make a real difference in added functionality for the most part.

The only place I feel it lets down the user is in its RAM handling. First off, its maximum RAM capacity is 2gb - not to be scoffed at compared to what was availabe before, but why so low when there are already so many boards that can take 3-4 gigabytes? If you work with RAM intensive applications this is a needless limitation.
This is not the biggest problem though - the board takes DDR400 ram, and has 3 slots - however, if you are using all three slots, they cannot be run at DDR400 but must be set to a slower speed! Why, oh why?
In the end though, it seems that most of the more severe RAM woes (such as the massive incompatibility problem with most simms, and the fact that 1 gig sims won't work in most cases) are actually the fault of AMD's 64 bit CPUs' crippleware built in ram controller, and not the KV8-MAX3.

I am stuck running 1.5 gigs of ram (not at DDR400 of course),, and cannot go to the 2 gig limit without spending a thousand dollars or so on special 'approved' ram. Yuck. For that money, I will simply build a second system and network it.

In conclusion, impressive board with some issues with RAM - its up to you to know if it will do what you need it to.