Introduction and Specifications
Gigabyte is here with the second SLI capable motherboard to the PCP labs. How does it compare to the A8N-SLI?
Introduction
When NVIDIA was first telling me about the upcoming nForce4 SLI chipset motherboards and their pending release, there were three motherboard companies that were listed as having the first available chipsets and thus the first available boards. The Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe reached my door first, followed recently by the Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard that we are reviewing here today.
Gigabyte is one of the “Tier 1” motherboard manufacturers, meaning that they produce and sell a large portion of the motherboards sold in the world market. This can be in both OEM and end users sales, so the companies that you might expect to see on the top tier based on the enthusiast market may be a surprise to you. Gigabyte has been in the mainboard business for as long as I can remember, and their products have always been among the better of the crowd. Their boards tended to be more system builder oriented than gamer and PC enthusiast oriented, but a shift has slowly occurred at the company that resulted in what we are reviewing here today: a board based on the top gaming enthusiast chipset on the market.
In this review, we’ll look at how the Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard stacks up on its own, without the merits of SLI performance, so that users such as your self can get a clear view of what Gigabyte has to offer. We will go over the SLI implementation that Gigabyte has chosen, but if you are looking for SLI-based graphics performance numbers, you’ll want to check out our SLI performance article after reading this review.
Specifications (from Gigabyte website)
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