Deliveries will commence by the end of January. The Asus K7M is arguably the first REAL motherboard for the AMD Athlon. The only other 1st generation Athlon board that came close is the FIC SD11, whose combination of the AMD 751 Northbridge chip and VIA 686 Southbridge allowed the potential of overclocking FSB through the Bios. Unfortunately the only speeds available as options are too high for the 750 chipset to handle, and so don't actually work. However where they deviated was in the motherboard design.
Some differences are clear to see just looking at the board.
Aswell as the now traditional combination of AGP, PCI and ISA slots, Asus chose to include an AMR slot. This seems like a strange choice, especially since the board comes with optional onboard audio, and including the AMR sacrifices the option of a 6th PCI slot, but there's no accounting for taste. The real differences however, are the other features this board offers. Firstly you actually DO have the option to overclock with this board. Most users are able to stably overclock to 110 mhz.