eVGA nForce 4 Motherboard Review :: The Board

EVGA 133-K8-NF43-AX Spec Sheet
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Part Number	133-K8-NF43-AX
Manufacturer	EVGA
Price Check	Find Best Price
Downloads	BIOS Drivers Manuals
Chipset	Nvidia nForce4
North Bridge	Nvidia nForce4 MCP
Socket	Socket 939
Processor Types	Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX
Number of CPUs
Front Side Bus	1GHz HyperTransport Bus Link
Memory Type	DDR
Memory Channels	Dual
Maximum Memory	4GB
External Graphics	PCI Express x16
IGP
South Bridge	Nvidia nForce4 MCP
Audio	8-channel
IDE	133/100/66/33
SCSI	None
SATA	1.5 GB/s
RAID	0, 1, 0+1
LAN	10/100/1000
Firewire	None
USB	USB 2.0
Expansion Slots
BIOS
Form Factor	ATX

The 133-K8-NF43-AX board is a standard ATX form-factor motherboard. Sporting the nForce4 chipset, this board supports all current Socket 939 CPUs from AMD including the dual-core CPUs, the FX CPUs and the Athlon 64 CPUs.. eVGA provides plenty of space around the CPU Socket for after-market cooling system. eVGA outfits the board with 4 184-pin DIMM slots providing support for up to 4GB of unbuffered non-ECC DDR400 memory.

CPU Socket

Memory Slots

Expansion on the board is rather interesting. There are not one, not two, but three PCI Express long slots on the motherboard, 2 PCI Express x8 slots and a PCI Express x16 slot in the middle. nForce4 does not support SLI mode officially, however, eVGA decided to include several PCI Express x1 slots on the board. I'll cover the reason why a little later in this review. Other expansion on this motherboard includes 3 PCI 2.3 slots, providing support for legacy PCI devices and a PCI Express x1 slot above the PCI Express x8 slot.

Exp. Slots

PCIe x1 slot+EZ Plug

PCI Slots

PCIe x16 Slot 1

Drive support on the eVGA motherboard is robust, as you'd expect from an nForce4 motherboard. nForce4 supports 4 SATA devices natively and eVGA outfits the board with 4 SATA ports. Personally, 4 SATA drives is enough for my uses. Some manufacturers put 10 ports on their boards, but that seems a bit nuts as no case I've seen has 10 drives bays or even close to that many. IDE drive support is provided by 2 IDE ports and a floppy drive connector.

eVGA includes a Realtek ALC850 CODEC for the on-board sound on the board. NVIDIA has not announced support for the HDA standard as of yet on their motherboards. The 850 supports 7.1 surround sound and is a decent on-board solution for audio. 850 supports EAX 1.0 and 2.0 (Unfortunately, Creative Labs has not licensed EAX 3.0 or 4.0 HD out to other manufacturers. The Realtek CODEC also supports A3D 1.0, and DirectSound. For the audiophile in me, I prefer a HDA solution.

Rear input/output ports on the nForce4 motherboard from eVGA include 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 COM ports, a parallel port, 6 jacks for the Realtek audio and a RJ45 jack for the onboard LAN. eVGA provides a Marvell 88E1111Gigabit Ethernet PHY for the onboard LAN. I don't have the retail package as of yet, so am unsure as to what accessories and bundle the motherboard will come with.