Does anyone remember when the Athlon was first introduced just over three years ago? To say that motherboard choices were limited is an understatement. In fact, due to both a degree of inconfidence in AMD, and fear of Intel, only three manufacturers initially supported the Athlon.

Fortunately, once manufacturers and consumers alike saw what the Athlon was capable of, that number rapidly grew, and today, the situation is much different. There are currently a handful of modern chipsets available for the Athlon -- just as many as are available for the Pentium 4. Likewise, at this point in time, there are quite possibly even more motherboards available for the Athlon than for the Pentium 4.

While no one’s about to argue that selection isn’t a good thing, it does make decision time much harder. Today we’re going to take a look at an option that sometimes gets ignored by the hardware community. This community is very brand-oriented -- Overclockers like their Abits and Iwills, others prefer the safety of their Asus. Often the fact that there are numerous other products out there that are more than sufficient (not to mention cheaper) gets forgotten.

DFI’s AD70 is a perfect example of such a board. There are certainly boards available with more features. There are boards available with better manuals and packaging, and of course, a bigger brand name. But if you don’t need all that, why pay for it?