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EVGA nForce4 133-P4-NF51-AX Motherboard Review :: The Board
NVIDIA's chipset supports all current LGA-775 CPUs including the Dual Core 8xx series, the 9xx series, the 7xx series and the Celeron D CPUs on the LGA-775 standard. One advantage of the NVIDIA chipset that isn't available on the Intel one is the ability to use the same motherboard whether its Dual Core or Single Core. Early Intel 925X and 915 boards don't support the Dual Core CPUs, requiring the 955X and above boards. EVGA uses a clear plastic cover for the LGA-775 Socket, protecting the Socket pins when no CPU is installed.  CPU Socket  DIMM slots Memory support on the board is provided by 4 DIMM (Dual- In-Line Memory Modules). The memory the board takes is DDR2 up to 667MHz. nForce4 for Intel supports up to 4GB. Intel's new boards support up to 8GB of memory with a 64-bit OS, but 4GB is enough for the hardware enthusiast wanting to play games. The board supports Dual Channel mode. To install memory put the matched pair into like colored DIMMs and you're good to go.  PCI slots  Triple PCI Express x16 slots SLI necessitates the use of at least two PCI Express x16 slots, one for each video card. Most nForce4 for Intel SLI motherboards require a SLI paddle to switch between single and dual card modes. EVGA went a different route. The nForce4 for Intel SLI board has three PCI Express x16 slots. In single card mode the middle slot is used. In SLI mode put video cards in the two other slots. In SLI mode, the slots will operate as x8 slots. As few games if any games fully stress out the bandwidth of x8 slots, this is a good choice. Other expansion slots include 3 PCI v2.3 compliant slots and a PCI Express x1 slot.  SATA Connectors Drive expansion on the board is fairly typical of motherboards today. Four SATA II ports are on the board, allowing for up to four SATA disks. NVIDIA's chipset supports RAID 0 (Mirror), 1 (Striping), 0+1 (Mirror Striping), JBOD modes. NVIDIA's utility for managing RAID is called NVRAID. The nForce4 for Intel SLI chipset supports up to 4 SATA II drives at a time. EVGA outfitted the board with two IDE ports and a Floppy disk drive port. Audio screenshots      Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC850 CODEC. This CODEC supports the AC'97 standard. Intel introduced the HDA (High Definition Audio) standard a couple of years ago to replace AC'97. NVIDIA introduced support for HDA with their 6150 chipset, but their high-end motherboard chipsets at present don't support it. The 850 supports 7.1 surround sound, S/PDIF. The back panel Input/Output consists of a RJ45 jack for the LAN, a PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse port, a Parallel Port, 2 Serial ports, 6 USB 2.0 ports, Line-In, Line-out and MIC jacks for the audio.  VIA VT6307S  Fintek F71872F  Marvell Chip EVGA includes some extraneous chips that are interesting. The VIA VT6307S is used to control Firewire ports if a bracket is installed. There is also a Fintek F71872F chip to control the I/O of the board, including the Floppy drive, the UART and a Parallel port. It's interesting to see two chips that normally would be controlled by NVIDIA's chips on the board. The third chip is a Marvell 88E1115-RCJ PHY chip to control the Gigabit LAN. Contents:
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