Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939: Features and Layout
| Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 Motherboard Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | nVidia nForce3 Ultra |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 455MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| CPU Ratios | 5x to 25x in 0.5x increments |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Auto, 66MHz to 100MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| HyperTransport | 1x-5x (200MHz to 1GHz) |
| Core Voltage | 0.8V to 1.70V in 0.025V increments |
| DRAM Voltage | +.1V, +.2V |
| AGP Voltage | +.1V, +.2V, +.3V |
| HyperTransport Voltage | +.1V, +.2V, +.3V |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Unbuffered Memory to 4GB |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 5 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | nVidia 2-Drive SATA(RAID 0, 1) Plus SiI3512 2-Drive SATA (RAID 0, 1) |
| Onboard IDE/RAID | Two Standard nVidia ATA133/100/66 (4 drives). Can be combined with SATA drives for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF3-250 2 1394B FireWire ports by TI controller |
| Dual Onboard LAN | 1Gigabit Ethernet by Marvell 8001 10/100 Ethernet by ICS 1883 |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC850 8-Channel with UAJ |
| Tested BIOS | M03 Beta |
More than any other manufacturer, Gigabyte loads their premium boards with every feature that you can think of, and then some. The K8NSNXP-939 certainly follows in that tradition as a member of the 6-Dual Deluxe family. Gigabyte has also developed a reputation of providing some of the widest ranges of adjustments to allow the Computer Enthusiast to squeeze the last bit of performance from their board, CPU, and memory, and the 939 continues that tradition.
The one glaring area that continues to plague recent Gigabyte designs is the extremely limited range of memory voltage adjustments. In this case, memory can be adjusted to +.2V and that's it. After seeing this complaint voiced in review after review, you would think that Gigabyte would seriously consider a wider range of vDIMM adjustments. Offsetting the limited vDIMM is a decent range of CPU voltage adjustments and the excellent addition of HyperTransport voltage options.
The most notable features of the K8NSNXP-939 include high-speed 1394B Firewire for firewire fanciers, Dual LAN, extensive RAID capabilities spanning SATA and IDE drives, and 8-channel audio with UAJ. We were also impressed with the updated design of the DPS 6-phase power module. It now sits lower on the board and our past complaints that the DPS impeded air flow are now history in the new design.
Layout of the Gigabyte 939 is nearly ideal, with the added step that even the SATA connectors are in locations that will not interfere with the largest PCI and AGP cards. The unique AGP EZ-Fix slot is also proving to be very useful, especially when using top-line 2-slot video cards. Anyone who has tried to remove a 6800 Ultra from a common rear-lever AGP slot probably cursed the designer and maybe broke the lever trying to find it under 2 slots of video card in a sea of capacitors. That's not to say EZ-Fix is that easy with a 2-slot card, but at least you have a fighting chance of removing the card. Gigabyte also kept capacitors away from the AGP slot.
ECS KV2 Extreme: Overclocking and Stress Testing
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939: Overclocking and Stress Testing
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RyanVM - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Also, networking benches would have been nice (throughput and CPU utilization). It would be interesting to see what kind of impact Gigabyte going with a 3rd party ethernet controller has in comparison to the MSI board using the NF3's controller.On a somewhat related note, when will the Neo2 actually be available for purchase?
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
How about telling board makers to use better Sound for their boards.I got my board as it came with a VIA Envy soundcard. When I see RealTek sound that tells me they don;t care about quality, but about what they can say comes with the board.
Even C-Media has a new full (non-ac97) soundchip out now that can;t be that much more then a realtek 850/650/655 chip.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
#7,8,9 - Corrected. Since ECS did use a SiS chip on their VIA board for secondary RAID, I got confused and spread the chipsets around :-)Stefpet - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
...but when will we see K8T890 or nforce4 motherboards?I don't want to be forced to replace the motherboard with a new one to get that top performing PCI Express card later...
Crassus - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Final words, somewhere in the middle of the page:"The ECS is a remarkable step forward for ECS"
:c)
Great work, though.
RyanVM - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Silly me, I meant ECS, not Epox.RyanVM - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF3-250" for the K8T800PRO-based Epox KV2?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
#4 - Corrected. With more than 9000 words a number typo seems inevitable.BLHealthy4life - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Still can't find the MSI K8n Neo2 mobo for sale anywhere.Been waiting and waiting....and waiting some more...
AkumaX - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Our FX53 topped out at about 2.59 GHz on the ECS KV2, which is slightly below the 3.6+ achieved on the top 939 boards