With the Socket 754 now the mainstream platform for many, the boards that support this socket have fallen in price considerably. Although some of the boards were introduced back in September of 2003 with the Athlon 64 launch, these motherboards are equipped with some of the latest offerings and features that a mainstream user might want. Socket 754, at least with earlier boards, isn?t the most enthusiast friendly platform, but it definitely offers great performance at stock speeds. If you remember, majority of the boards were plagued with overclocking issues for one reason or another.