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Specification and Accessories
Gigabyte Company has always been knows for a offering the customers a great variety of diverse solutions based on the same core logic set. NVIDIA nForce4 SLI is also no exception for Gigabyte. At this point there are four mainboard models based on this chipset in the Gigabyte product range. We managed to get our hands on the most interesting solution of the four: Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI.
The mainboard looks very impressive due to a large number of onboard components, so it would be really hard to build an opinion about basing only on the PCB photo. So, let’s take a look at the specification.
Gigabyte GA- K8 NXP- SLI | |
CPU | AMD Athlon 64 FX |
Chipset | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI |
Hypertransport bus | 1 GHz |
Clock generator frequencies, MHz | 200-456 (with 1MHz increment) |
Overclocking-friendly functions | Adjustable Vcore, Vmem, Vchipset and HyperTransport voltage. |
Memory | 4 DDR DIMM slots for dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM |
PCI Express slots | 2 x PCI Express x16 2 x PCI Express x1 |
PCI expansion slots | 2 |
USB 2.0 ports | 10 (4 – on the rear panel) |
Порты IEEE1394 | 3 (0 – on the rear panel, |
ATA-100/133 | 2 ATA-133 channels |
Serial ATA | 4 Serial ATA-300 channels |
IDE RAID support | RAID 0, 1, 0+1 in the chipset |
Integrated sound | 8-channel AC97 Realtek ALC850 codec |
Integrated LAN | Gigabit Ethernet (in the chipset and Vitesse VSC8201RX PHY) |
Additional features | DualBIOS technology |
BIOS | Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG |
Form-factor | ATX, 305 x 244 mm |
Here I would like to stress that the other three Gigabyte mainboards based on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset are based on the same PCB, but boast slightly different (reduced) features set compared with what we have on GA-K8NXP-SLI. Therefore, everything we will be saying in this review about the GA-K8NXP-SLI, is mostly true for the other similar products. In the less feature-rich modifications Gigabyte may remove the FireWire controller, the second Gigabit network controller and the additional Serial ATA RAID controller, but other than that all the mainboards in this product line from this manufacturer are very similar.
As for the accompanying accessories that come with the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI mainboard, it is pretty much as attractive as the mainboard’s features. All the accessories didn’t even fit into a standard size box. As a result, this mainboard is selling as a kit of two boxes wrapped into multi-color carton.
Inside this two-storied box you will find the following:
- A CD disk with a standard set of drivers and utilities;
- Eight red and orange Serial ATA cables;
- Eight power cables for Serial ATA HDDs;
- One 80-pin Parallel ATA cable and one FDD cable;
- SLI Bridge board for SLI mode;
- A bracket for the care rare panel with a special stopper for SLI Bridge fastening;
- I/O shield panel for the case rare side;
- A bracket with two IEEE1394 ports and two High Speed USB ports;
- Two brackets for the case rear panel with two High Speed USB ports;
- A daughter card of the six-channel CPU voltage converter;
- WiFi PCI card, 802.11g WLAN with a built-in antenna;
- A brief installation guide and detailed user’s manual.
Although this is a really nice set of accessories we have here, I don’t think you will be surprised with it. Not so long ago, when Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI mainboard belonged to the top-price range products, it sold for about $200. So, the users really paid the price for these two boxes full of goodies.
