Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 Motherboard 

Monday, January 23, 2006

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The much anticipated Nforce 4 based motherboard gets integrated video, making it affordable for entry-level users

With the NForce4 range, NVIDIA has set the bar a couple of notches higher for everyone else. However, we have always had a small problem with the lack of on-board video, which meant that budget users missed out on the excellent value for money NF4 boards. NVIDIA fixed all that with their C51 chipsets and they seemed to have gotten one up on ATi's RS480 this time. However, NF4 with video is available only for the AMD platform as of now with no immediate plans for an Intel rollout.

The first thing that's different about this board is that NVIDIA has provided two GPUs, the 6100 and the 6150 (the latter obviously being faster, 425 MHz v/s 475) and two southbridge chips, 410 and 430. This has given manufacturers the ability to mix and match the chips while providing solutions that target the audience more directly. The top-end version of the board would, thus, be based on the GeForce 6150 chip and the Nforce 430. While we would've loved to review the top-end board, this one is a middle-level board that has a 6100 GPU coupled with an Nforce 430 southbridge. The board is a microATX form factor, but that in no way means it lacks any features.  It supports pretty much all the 939 processors from AMD, including the dual core X2. It has four RAM slots supporting a total of 4 GB DDR400 memory (no support for DDR2 yet), one PCI-E x16 and x1 slot each coupled with two PCI slots and four SATA 3 Gb/s slots. Even though it has 7.1-channels high-def audio, it is still based on the RealTek chip and cannot match the Creative Sound Blaster chips we are seeing on some boards. But then, those are priced much higher than this one.

As far as the connectivity goes, it features eight USB ports, four at the back and four in the front, one Gigabit LAN port along with the latest feature--an on-board video port.

Being a budget board, we didn't really expect it to break any records, but it did surprise us. Even though we just got 657 on our 3DMark 2005 test, the creditable thing is that the test ran its entire length on the on-board video solution. We being serious gaming enthusiasts wanted to play all the latest ones on it and tested this board with a whole host of them. It performed brilliantly for an on-board solution and if you turn off most effects and lower the resolution, you will get a fairly playable frame rate even in Doom 3 and our latest favorite, NFS Most Wanted.

In Far Cry, the board did wonders and gave us more than just a playable frame rate at 55 fps! We did an auto detect, and Far Cry automatically set the settings to high and returned a 25 fps frame rate, which is not exactly perfect but is more or less playable. We then measured the overall performance using the PCMark 2005 suite and the board did a commendable job at 2895.

These are some of the best scores we have ever seen on an IGP solution.  It easily beats Intel's GMA 900 and we suspect that the higher end 6150/430 will easily beat ATi's IGP solution as well.

Bottom Line:  Due to the lack of SLI on this board, it is definitely not an enthusiast gamer's board. But it's a great offer for the casual gamers/users who would prefer buying a graphics card later. If you are an everyday user, we would recommend this.

Having said that, we think that for small office home office users, high definition video would have been an excellent addition. But that is only available in the top-end boards based on the 6150/430 chips. Also we seriously feel that NVIDIA has missed out a great opportunity to provide a killer integrated graphics solution by limiting the pixel pipelines to two instead of four but as someone at NVIDIA once told us, 'we always come out with something faster later', well, we are waiting!

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