For the first time in about 24 months a mainboard powered by a core-logic from ALi emerged for sale. Albatron PX848 Like Pro, unveiled just a couple of days ago, is not only Albatron’s first mainboard for Intel Pentium 4 processors based on non-Intel chipset, but also ALi’s first actual platform for the NetBurst chips.

As expected, Albatron PX848 Like Pro mainboard based on ALi’s M1683/M1563 core-logic and providing support for Pentium 4 and Celeron microprocessors with up to 800MHz QPB, up to 3GB of PC3200 memory, AGP 8x, 6-channel audio, 3Com 10/100Mb/s Ethernet controller and other important features is quoted at just $72 - $79 in Japan, according to Akiba PC Hotline.

The pricing is very low, but, unfortunately, there is absolutely no information about performance of the ALi M1683-based product.

In general, mainboards with aggressive pricing may see a success in the market, but, on the other hand, low-cost PCs always require integrated graphics that is absent on Albatron PX848 Like Pro. As a result, the total cost of such personal computer with discrete graphics card may be higher compared to a system based on i865G or i865GV chipset with Intel Extreme Graphics 2 solution. Moreover, Intel’s 865G-series with dual-channel memory support will almost certainly perform a bit faster than ALi’s M1683.