Prior to the Athlon, AMD competed with Intel only at the low-end. Inexpensive processors are, more often than not, matched with low-end, feature poor motherboards. But with the Athlon, AMD has broken into the high-end CPU market. And now motherboard manufacturers are backing AMD up with high-end motherboards.

After skipping the first generation of Athlon motherboards, ABIT is climbing into the ring with their KA7 Athlon motherboard. We were able to use a beta KA7 in Taiwan, and here is what we saw.