VIA PT880 PRO: Biostar’s Deluxe Dual Combo

The PT880 Pro-A7 Combo motherboard is based on the VIA PT880 PRO and VT8237R chipsets. Our initial impression of the Biostar PT880 Pro-A7 Combo upon opening the box was one of piqued interest. The board supports both AGP and PCI Express slots for graphic cards along with support for both DDR and DDR2 memory. The layout of the board is decent, although we disagree with the placement of the 20-pin ATX power connector and IDE connectors. We were also disappointed with the omission of the excellent VIA Envy24PT audio controller and Gigabit Ethernet, but we understood the absence of these features based upon a retail price of US $65.