Gigabyte's Universal GA-6VTX Motherboard

Most times, upgrading to a new processor also means upgrading to a new motherboard. In fact, avoiding shelling out the bucks for a new mobo is a big reason many of us are interested in dual processor boards. Start with one processor and you can add another later as an upgrade. Gigabyte thinks it's got a solution to beating this seemingly planned obsolescence in its new GA-6VTX "Blue Thunder" motherboard, which the company says is set up to support current and future Pentium III and compatible processors. The board has a VIA Apollo Pro133T chipset and allows for upgrades to processors up to and beyond 1.13GHz. Other features include South Bridge VT82C686B, an Ultra DMA 100 Bus Master interface for IDE devices, overclocking options like multiple bus speeds and multiple CPU voltage settings, AC 97 audio, one AMR slot, 3 DIMMs, one AGP 4X slot, an infrared connector, wake-on-LAN, external/internal modem wake-up, 4 USB ports (2 ports by optional USB cable), 5 PCI slots, and one ISA slot. Gigabyte says the GA-6VTX is also backward compatible to support existing processors. If it had slots for current and future RAM configurations as well as processors, it would be a great option. However, if it can keep you from replacing your motherboard for a while, it still sounds pretty good (if you're into Intel).