Albatron nForce4 K8SLI

Introduction


Sometimes us reviewer tend to forget that not everyone have the money to buy one of the latest and fastest cards available. Instead of a GeForce 7800GT or GeForce 7800GTX many instead have opted for cheaper, but yet capable, GeForce 6600GT.

But what if you have one of those and want to in a cheap way increase the graphics performance? NVIDIA has the solution with SLI. Pop in a second card and in theory get double the performance.

Today I am looking at one of the cheaper SLI-capable motherboards on the market, the K8SLI from Albatron.

The specifikations


Even though the motherboard is one of the cheaper SLI-capable motherboards on the market it still has a lot of cool stuff on it:

AMD Athlon™64 / Athlon™64 FX /Athlon™64 X2 Dual Core Processors
Socket 939 with Hyper Transport™ 1000+ MHz
4 DDR333/400 Memory Sockets (Dual Channel).
Build-in Realtek AC97 6 channel
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI GbE LAN
2*PCI Express x 16 ( nVIDIA SLi technology support X8+X8 ,No support ATi Radeon X300)
2*PCI Express x 1, 2*PCI Slots
4 Serial ATAII Channels, Serial ATA RAID 0,1& 0+1
2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices
Dual BIOS (Second BIOS by Optional ABS Card)
8 USB 2.0/1.1 Ports (4 ports by optional cable)

Processor
Socket 939 AMD Athlon™64 / Athlon™64 FX /Athlon™64 X2 Dual Core Processors

FSB / Transport
1000+ MHz

Chipset
Chip : nForec4 SLI ( Single chip)
LAN Chip : VITESSE VSC8201RX (PHY)
Audio Chip : Realtek ALC655
I/O Chip: Winbond Smart I/O W83627THF

Memory
4 * DDR Sockets:
DDR 333/400 NON-ECC DDR SDRAM up to 4GB ( Dual Channel )

Expansion Slots
2 x PCI Express x 16 2*PCI Express x 16 ( nVIDIA SLi technology support X8+X8 ,No support ATi Randeon X300)
2 x PCI Express x 1
2 x PCI slots (PCI 2.3 compliant)

IDE / SATA Connectors
2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE devices
4 Serial ATAII Channels, up to 4 Serial ATAII Hard Drives,and supports Serial ATA RAID 0,1& 0+1

Onboard I/O Connectors
1 x Floppy Connector
4 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (4 ports by optional cable)
1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)
1 x CPU fan header ( 1 fan rotation detection function )
2 x System fan headers
2 x 5 pin system panel header (Intel spec)
1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)
1 x ABS header(Second BIOS by Optional ABS Card)

I/O via Back Panel
PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 2 x USB(2.0/1.1), RJ45,1 x Com(serial), 1 x Parallel, 1 x RCA,1x Line-in/Line-out(Speaker Out)

Power
24-pin ATX power connector, 4-pin ATX 12V power connector

BIOS Feature
4Mb Flash EEPROM
Award BIOS with ACPI, DMI2.0, PnP, WfM2.0, Green Suspend to RAM (S3), Suspend to Disk (S4) Wake on keyboard/mouse, Wake on LAN/RTC Timer

Hardware Monitoring
3 FAN sensors, CPU/System voltages and temperature monitoring

Special Feature
Zero Jumper Design
Dual BIOS (Second BIOS by ABS Card) (Optional)
Zero Jumper Design
Adjustable CPU frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable Vcore,,VMemory for overclocking.
Watch Dog Timer (auto-reset system when it can not handle overclock configurations)
Special design for CPU Over Temperature Protection.( OTP )

Form Factor
ATX ( 293x198 mm )

As you can see there’s a lot of stuff included in this motherboard. The only main complaint I have is the complete lack for Firewire-support. It’s not just that there isn’t any Firewire-ports in the back or any Firewire-backplate included, the motherboard completely lacks any Firewire-headers on the motherboard meaning you cannot even hook up the Firewire-port of a case. In my case I needed a Firewire-port and had to buy a separate PCI-card for that.

This tiny risercard contains a rescue-BIOS.

A cool feature is the dual-bios support. Basically you get a second bios-chip that is placed on a tiny riser card that you hook up to the motherboard. This ensures that even when you botch up a bios-update you will be able to switch to a working bios and repair the damage. While I so far haven’t managed to screw up a bios-update we all know that it is just as likely to happen anytime you do the update.

Other than this the motherboard has the expected features. 4 DRAM-slots I nice while just 2 PCI-slots might be on the short side, especially if you like me want to both put in Firewire-ports and a X-FI soundcard.

If you are worried that your PSU just have a 20-pin ATX power connector I can calm you by saying that this motherboard currently is powered by a 240W DignN HTPC PSU with just a 20-pin ATX connector and a 4-pin 12V connector and that it works fine. If you plan on running SLI or a high-end videocard you of course should use a much better PSU and then make sure it has a 24-pin power connector.

The box the motherboard is pretty cool and shows off the SLI-support comparing it to a tank with dual-guns. When you open the box you quickly will realize where Albatron have saved their money. You get the bare necessities: ATA133 cable, SATA-cable, SATA to molex power connector, backplate, SLI bridging adapter, Albatron BIOS Security card and a manual and CD with drivers.