GIGABYTE - Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939 nForce3 Ultra Motherboard Review

AS A DUAL OPTERON user running two monitors and a pair of hard drives in RAID 1, I’m a pretty firm believer that two is better than one. Maybe that’s why Gigabyte’s GA-K8NSNXP-939 Athlon 64 motherboard caught my eye. The GA-K8NSNXP-939 might only accommodate a single 939-pin Athlon 64 processor, but the board comes equipped with dual BIOS chips, a pair of Ethernet jacks, two Serial ATA RAID controllers, dual-channel memory, and even a six-phase "Dual Power System." Be still my beating heart.

And there’s more to the GA-K8NSNXP-939 than two of everything. The board also sports NVIDIA’s nForce3 Ultra chipset, a feature-rich BIOS, and a handy external Serial ATA adapter. What’s not to like? A couple of things, actually. Read on to see where the GA-K8NSNXP-939 shines and where it stumbles.

. . .At first glance, the GA-K8NSNXP-939 looks like an attractive Socket 939 board. With a capable nForce3 Ultra chipset, mostly great performance, every integrated peripheral one could ask for, a well-equipped BIOS, and neat extras like DualBIOS and an external SATA adapter, there’s certainly a lot to like. However, there’s is also a lot of untapped potential lurking just under the surface, potential that Gigabyte could have tapped to create a much better board.

Gigabyte’s GA-K8NSNXP-939 motherboard
Dual everything@ The Tech Report