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The KN3-SLI2 is based upon NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset, and therefore supports the latest AMD Athlon 64, FX series, X2 and Duron CPUs on the AMD Socket AM2 platform. I tested the 5000+, the FX-62 and a 4600+ EE CPU in the system. All booted without issue. One thing about AMD CPUs is that they tend to stay compatible for a long time, as the latest Socket 939 CPU works on the earliest Socket 939 motherboard.  CPU Socket  999 DIMM slots  Back CPU Bracket ECS provided the board with four 240-pin DIMM (Dual In-line Memory Modules) slots. The board supports DDR2 400/533/667/800 MHz natively. ECS says that their board supports up to 32GB of memory. No current 8GB memory modules are available, but there are 4 GB modules available. Note, that the maximum memory that Windows XP or any 32-bit Operating System can address is 4GB total, so more than 4GB requires another OS like Windows Vista or Linux.  PCI Express x16 slot  Expansion slots  PCI Express x1 slots SLI motherboards have one defining characteristic, two full length PCI Express x16 slots for the video cards. ECS's KN3-SLI2 slot arrangement is PCI Express x16 Slot, PCI Express x1 slot, PCI Express x1 slot, PCI Express x16 slots, PCI, PCI. To install SLI video cards, insert one into each PCI Express x16 slot and attach the SLI bridge connector between them on the Golden Finger connection. I tried two of the new 8800GTX cards, the ASUS 8800GTX and the XFX 8800GTX on the board. The board arrangement worked well, as the card separation allows the plenty of airflow between them. ECS has listed a group of video cards on their site that are supported on their SLI motherboards. The KN3-SLI2 is not on the list as of yet, but the other SLI motherboards on the list have the 7800GTX as the last card tested in SLI mode with a disclaimer that other cards might cause damage.  5 SATA ports  2 SATA ports ECS has outfitted the KN3-SLI2 with an interesting mix of storage options. There are 7 SATA ports on the board, with 5 controlled by the MCP55XE southbridge, and two further SATA ports controlled by a JMB363 controller. The external SATA port is also controlled by the NVIDIA MCP55XE. MCP55XE supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD and NCQ. JMB363 supports RAID 0, 1 and RAID 0+1 configurations.  CD-IN  Realtek ALC883 CODEC Audio drivers     Onboard sound has improved to the point that most boards have more than adequate sound with support for 7.1 Surround Sound, SPDIF, multiple audio streams and other features. The KN3-SLI2 board has a Realtek ALC883 CODEC that fully supports the High Definition Audio standard. I prefer ADI's SoundMAX CODEC due to support of Sonic Focus, but the Realtek CODEC is adequate for onboard sound.  Rear IO  Dual Giga LAN  Marvell LAN chip  Speaker The rear IO on any board is always interesting and important as to expandability without a bracket. The ECS board comes with an external SATA port on the rear IO, a PS/2 mouse, a PS/2 keyboard port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, a COM1 port, 2 RJ-45 jacks for the onboard Gigabit Ethernet controlled by two Marvell 88E1116 PHYs, and a fan to cool the MOSFETs and the CPU area. Contents: 
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