Gigabyte to Produce a Socket 940 Mainboard for Athlon 64 FX

by Anton Shilov
09/11/2003 | 04:28 AM

Last Friday we told you about a Socket 754 mainboard from Gigabyte Technology based on NVIDIA nForce3 150 core-logic (see this news-story). The information we provided was absolutely correct as today Gigabyte published everything on its own web-site. However, we did not share all information with you, apparently. The mainboard manufacturer will also unveil a Socket 940 version of its GA-K8NNXP mainboard!

AMD Athlon 64 processors for Socket 940 form-factor will be branded as AMD Athlon 64 FX CPUs and will boast with dual-channel memory controller. Their performance will be considerably higher compared to the Socket 754 chips, even though their core-clocks will start at the same 2.0, 2.20GHz. Certainly, the processors with dual-channel PC3200 memory controller will cost significantly more compared to less advanced CPUs.

Here are the technical features of GA-K8NNXP-940:

• Supports Socket 940 AMD Athlon 64 processors;
• NVIDIA nForce3 150 core-logic;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM;
• 5 PCI and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 controller with RAID support;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support;
• 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet adapter from Realtek;
• USB 2.0 ports;
• 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• Integrated AC`97 6-channel audio solution with S/PDIF connectors;
• Loads of additional functions and technologies from Gigabyte, including DualBIOS, DualPowerSystems Xpress Installation, Xpress™ Recovery, Q-Flash;
• Probably, some overclocking and tuning functions;
• ATX Form-factor.

The mainboard contains loads of additional controllers and will require installation of multiply drivers, such as Serial ATA-150 and audio, which definitely you should not forget about.

Pricing and availability of the GA-K8NNXP-940 were not mentioned in the recent news-release from Gigabyte.