Introduction

There have been quite a few nForce2 reviews out by now, including a few on our site. Less common to this point, however, have been ones that cover boards with the new GeForce4 IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor). I've been fortunate enough to get a hold of one of Leadtek's new K7NCR18G-Pro boards to test. You see, when the other guys were clamoring for nForce2's, I held back and decided to wait for the IGP boards. My old board, a Leadtek K7N420DA had an onboard GeForce2 MX, and while I didn't use it as my primary card, I found it came in handy enough times that I wanted to try another IGP motherboard. The IGP boards have obvious utility for folks who like the all-in-one solution of video, sound, NIC, etc in one easy to install package. There's a certain appeal to dropping your board in, slapping in a CPU, some RAM, and a couple of drives and pretty much being done with your PC assembly. Even for those of us that plan on installing a higher end add-on card though, there's some utility to the design. For one thing, it's nice to be able to have the onboard video ready to go during set up so that you can get everything else installed and working before you worry about dropping in an add-on graphics card. The IGP simplifies set up in that regard. Another bonus is that you've always got a back up vid card ready to go at a moment's notice with no installation and no hassle in case something goes wrong. The old nForce1's IGP saved my butt a couple of times when I was having issues with a test card and couldn't afford to be without a PC while I troubleshot the problem. In those instances, I just switched over to the onboard GeForce card and kept plugging away! It was enough to convince me of the value of having a board with decent IGP available if need be. For this review, I'm going to be taking a look at what the nForce2 brings to the table over the older nForce1 boards.

Features

Main Features

Based on NVIDIA nForce2-GT (nForce2 IGP + nForce2 MCP-T) Integrated Graphics Processor

Supports up to 333 Front-Side Bus for AMD Athlon/XP and Duron CPU

HyperTransport Technology Support

128 bit DualDDR Memory Architecture with support up to 3GB DDR 400 memory.

GeForce4 MX GPU with nView with DVI-D / TV Support

Supports AGP 8X interface for high-end 3D Graphics card

Built-in NVIDIA SoundStorm Audio with Dolby Digital 5.1 Encoding , SPDIF digital output and 6-channel speakers support

USB 2.0 controller support up to maximum 6 USB 2.0 ports

Two Ultra ATA133 IDE dual channel interfaces, data transfer rate up to 133MB/sec

Built-in 10/100 NVIDIA Ethernet

3 ports IEEE 1394a Firewire

Supports Hardware Monitoring utility for monitoring system status.

BIOS and hardware offers CPU Over Temperature Shutdown (O.T.S) function to protect CPU from burnout

Support Vcore, Vmem and AGP Vddq adjustment for better system compatibility

Provide header for Smart Card Reader Interface and application program Wow! That's quite a list of features and specs isn't it? Well, in my opinion the biggies on that list include the onboard GeForce4 MX, NVIDIA's SoundStorm audio, USB 2.0 and Firewire support, the 333MHz FSB, and the 8x AGP slot. Since most of the nForce2 advancements have been touched on before, I’ll just direct you to our nForce2 Preview if you’d like to have a recap of them.