XFX nForce 750a SLI Motherboard Review :: nForce 750a Layout

The CPU area of the XFX nForce 750a is entirely clear of obstructions, allowing the user to mount after-market cooling solutions on the board without issue. XFX uses Solid State capacitors which are less likely to break off or leak than the traditional capacitors. The board has a Socket 940 AM2+ interface meaning that it can support most CPUs on the AMD side of the fence.

The XFX motherboard is a traditional ATX board. There are four DIMM Sockets under the CPU Socket which support up to 8GB of DDR2-1066MHz memory. AMD has moved the memory controller to the CPU meaning that DDR2-1066 support is dependent on the CPU and not the chipset. The memory slots are color coded, with like colored memory sockets being used to run the motherboard in Dual-Channel mode.

The 8-pin power connector is located on the right hand leading edge of the motherboard, meaning that it is the closest component to the PSU on the board, a great positioning for cable management. The 24-pin power connector is on the middle of the lower edge of the motherboard. As there is nothing in between the Power cable and the PSU in terms of cables, this is acceptable. There is a diagnostic LED on the board that tells of normal operation.

The XFX board has six SATA ports on the lower left hand edge of the motherboard arranged neatly in two rows of three ports. There is a seventh SATA port on the upper part of the motherboard. SATA RAID 0, 1, 10 and JBOD mode are supported by the NVIDIA MediaShield application. Legacy FDD and IDE ports round out the drive expansion available on the XFX board so that the user can utilize old style floppy disks and DVD drives that require those interfaces.

XFX chose to use jumpers for enabling SLI on the motherboard a throwback to the early days of the nForce 4 SLI boards that required moving a card or jumper to enable SLI. The board has two PCI Express x16 slots, two PCI Express x1 slots in between the x16 slots and three PCI legacy slots. Note that when using a single card to use the second PCI Express x16 slot.

Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC888 CODEC. Modern onboard audio is good enough for almost every user as it provides 7.1 Surround Sound+2 channel simultaneous audio stream capability and the ability to play back HDCP content. Some boards on the market support EAX 4.0 but the XFX one does not and those boards are generally for the high-end enthusiast market that is different than the market the nForce 750a is targeted for.

The IO area of the board is rather interesting for a board that supports SLI. The integrated graphics has a HDMI connection, a DVI-I connection and a D-Sub connection, or all three available monitor connections. There are four USB 2.0 ports, an external SATA port, the audio jack for the HDMI and six audio jacks for the onboard audio on the IO. Rounding out the IO is the customary PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports.