GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 Motherboard Review :: GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4

Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 Spec Sheet
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Part Number	GA-M57SLI-S4
Manufacturer	Gigabyte
Price Check	Find Best Price
Downloads	BIOS Drivers Manuals
Chipset	Nvidia nForce 570 SLI
North Bridge	Nvidia nForce 570 SLI
Socket	Socket AM2 (940)
Processor Types	Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2 dual-core
Number of CPUs	1
Front Side Bus	800/667/533/400
Memory Type	DDR2
Memory Channels	Dual, Single
Maximum Memory	16GB
External Graphics	PCI Express x16
IGP
South Bridge	Nvidia nForce 570 MCP
Audio	8-channel
IDE	133/100/66/33
SCSI	None
SATA	3.0 GB/s
RAID	0, 1, 0+1, 5
LAN	10/100/1000
Firewire	IEEE 1394a
USB	USB 2.0
Expansion Slots
BIOS	AWARD
Form Factor	ATX

GIGABYTE decided to outfit the motherboard with an nForce 570 chip. This chip supports all current AMD AM2 CPUs including the Athon 64 FX-62, the 5000 and the other Socket 940 AM2 CPUs. I was able to install and test compatibility with the 5000+ and FX-62. Both CPUs were identified by the GIGABYTE BIOS immediately and without a flash update.

Four DIMM slots means the M57SLI-S4 board can support up to 8GB of unbuffered non-ECC DDR2 memory. AMD CPUs have the memory controller on the CPU itself in lieu of a separate chipset, and up to DDR2 800 is officially supported by AMD. The nForce 570 does not support NVIDIA'S new EPP standard, meaning the memory will need to overclock manually and not work with the new EPP memory settings.

The M57SLI motherboard supports NVIDIA's patented SLI configurations. There are two PCI Express x16 slots on the board. NVIDIA decided to outfit the 570 SLI chip with 28 PCI Express lanes. This forces the board to operate in SLI at x8 mode. Why NVIDIA decided not to provide 46 lanes as in the nForce 590, I'm not sure. Perhaps performance in SLI mode would be too close to its bigger brother. Also present on the board are two PCI v2.3 slots and three PCI Express x1 slots.

Drive expansion on the M57SLI-S4 board is very good. GIGABYTE decided to include 6 SATA ports, the maximum that NVIDIA supports with their new MCP55 chip. Massive RAID is supported by the nForce 570 SLI chip. This allows the user to combine 6 drives into one with RAID 0 or two redundant RAID 5 arrays. RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 1.5 are supported by NVIDIA's new chip. Also present on the board are two PATA connectors and a Floppy drive connector.

Sound driver

One thing missing from most NVIDIA based motherboards except the 6100 series was High Definition Audio (HDA). HDA is the replacement for the AC'97 standard that has been in use on motherboards for years. The benefits of HDA over AC'97 include support for DVD-Audio bandwidth requirements, Dolby Digital EX and 7.1 surround sound, increased bandwidth that allows for 192 kHz 32-bit multi-channel audio. All nForce 5 series motherboards support HDA. The M57SLI-S4 board comes with a Realtek ALC883 CODEC for HDA.

The back panel of the board includes a RJ45 jack for the LAN, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 6 audio jacks for the onboard sound, S/PDIF In and Out ports, a COM port a PS/2 Mouse port, a PS/2 Keyboard port and a Parallel port. GIGABYTE provides a Marvell PHY to control one of the LAN ports.