Gigabyte has long been known to produce quality motherboards for the hardware community. One of their newest socket 754 boards is this K9NS Pro which utilizes the Nvidia nForce 3 250 chipset.
The two changes that were made to this 250 chipset from the 150 chipset is the addition of SATA and 2 more USB 2.0 ports. Nvidia also offers a nForce 3 250Gb which adds in a gigabit NIC, something this board lacks. With there being so little different between the two chipsets it’s a wonder Nvidia didn’t just include the SATA and Gb in the 150 chipset. With VIA’s K8T800 and Nvidia’s nForce 3 chipsets competing head to head against each other it will be interesting to see who comes out ahead.
Processor
– Designed for AMD Athlon64 socket 754
Chipset
– NVIDIA nForce3 250 chipset
– Super I/O: ITE IT8712F chip
Memory
– Type: DDR400/ 333/ 266- 184pin
– Max capacity: Up to 3GB by 3 DIMM slots
Integrated Peripherals
– Silicon Image sil3512 controller
– GigaRAID ATA 133 RAID controller
– T.I. IEEE1394 controller
– Marvell 8001 Gigabit Ethernet controller
– Realtek ALC850 Audio AC’97 Codec
Internal I/O Connectors
– 4 x Serial ATA connector
– 4 x UDMA ATA 133/100/66 Bus Master IDE connectors
– 1 x FDD connector
– 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (supports 4 ports)
– 2 x IEEE 1394 connectors (supports 3 ports)
– S/P DIF input/output pin header
– 3 x cooling fan pin headers
– CD/AUX in
– 1 x Game/Midi connector
Expansion Slots
1 x AGP slot (8x/4x-AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only.
5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.3 compliant)
Back Panel I/O
– PS/2 Keyboard / Mouse
– 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
– 1 x RJ45 ports
– 2 x COM ports
– 1 x LPT
– Audio (1 x Line-in / 1 x Line-out / 1 x Mic) connector
Other Features
– Xpress Installation
– Xpress Recovery
– Q-Flash
– @BIOS
Miscellaneous
– ATX form factor (30.5 x 24.4 cm)
The box for this motherboard has a very shiny finish which seems to be the current trend in motherboard packaging. Both the top and bottom of the box are covered with the motherboard’s specifications. Additionally, the colorful graphics on the box are very eye-catching.
Gigabyte provides two IDE cables, a floppy cable, and two SATA cables for your drives. If your power supply doesn’t happen to have native SATA connections you can use the Molex adapter included. Since the back panel of the motherboard isn’t standard you also get an I/O shield to match.
The back panel of the motherboard has four USB connections but if that isn’t enough you get two more on the header. Also on the header are two firewire ports, one 1394a and one 1394b. Last but not least you get a digital out header to use with the onboard audio.
Included for your reference is a motherboard manual, quick PC installation guide, and motherboard settings sticker. The combination of this information should be more than enough for you to get all the information you would need to setup, configure, and troubleshoot if necessary. The driver CD provided contains your drivers and a few system utilities which will be helpful for installation and maintenance. Finally you get a Gigabyte badge that you can stick on your case or where ever else you like.
The overall layout of the board looks to be pretty good. The 12v connector is at the very top left of the motherboard so it will stay out of the way. The most obvious thing missing from this motherboard is a north/southbridge which has been replaced with Nvidia’s nForce 250 chipset. The back plate for the heatsink bracket is made of plastic and attached with some nylon bolts. Since I will be using a Zalman 7000Cu I removed this plate to install it.
Room around the socket isn’t as important as it was in the days of socket A since most heatsinks now use the standard mounting bracket. Some heatsinks however don’t use the bracket like my Zalman 7000Cu, which I had no problem fitting on the board. Also right next to the socket are two SATA connections for your drives, not the best placement for these but the motherboard is pretty cramped which may have forced Gigabyte to put them there.
The DDR slots are positioned far enough from the AGP slot so you can easily change memory without having to remove your video card. The IDE and floppy connectors are adjacent to the DDR slots which is a good spot for them. This location however isn’t a good choice for the ATX connector and would have been better off over by the 12v connector. As I mentioned before the nForce 3 250 chipset is the only one on here and is covered by an active gold colored heatsink.
This heatsink produces little to no noise when powered on which pleases me since I don’t like fan noise. One nice thing about Gigabyte motherboards is that they use a dual BIOS system which gives you redundancy. If you happen to improperly flash your BIOS saving you the time and frustration of having to RMA your motherboard.
Five PCI slots should be more than enough for your cards as well as the 8x AGP slot for your video card. The retention mechanism for the video card isn’t a latch but a pull pin. This solution was a little tough to get to with the motherboard standing vertically, a latch system would probably have been a better choice. From the picture of the bottom left of the motherboard you can see the iTE IT8712F I/O controller, Silicon Image SiI 3512, Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 1394a Link Layer Controller, and Marvell Yukon Yukon 88E8001 gigabit Ethernet controller. On the bottom right of the motherboard you will find two SATA connections and your ATA133 IDE RAID which is controlled by the iTE IT8212F chip. A nice thing that most companies are doing now including Gigabyte are color coding the jumper headers making installation easier.
This motherboard uses the popular AWARD BIOS. One thing about the BIOS that you will want to take note of is that you have to press CTRL + F1 to display advanced chipset features. For some reason Gigabyte decided to hide this from users, I don’t really know why they did this but just remember that. From the integrated peripherals section you can enable or disable all of the onboard devices. Since I am not using any legacy ports or SATA I disabled them all.
The frequency/voltage control is a bit scarce when it comes to options. You can change your multiplier from 5-25, the FSB from 200-300, and lock the AGP to 66MHz or increase it up to 100MHz. You are able to increase the CPU voltage to 1.700v, VDDQ up +0.3, VCC12_HT up +0.3, and DDR up +0.2 all of which are pretty low. It would have been nicer to see some higher voltages to assist in overclocking. After bringing up the advanced chipset options you are able to control all of your memory timings, HT frequency, AGP settings, and thermal throttling. This section isn’t lacking much, if anything, so hopefully it will make up for the limited frequency/voltage options.
The PC health status section monitors your voltages, CPU temperature, and fan speeds. You are also able to set warnings for the CPU temperature and fan speeds which can save your hardware. I don’t like the fact that that the voltage monitors simply say “OK” I would rather know what the actual voltage is. This BIOS also gives you the ability to choose from English, French, Dutch, Spanish or Chinese.
The test systems below are identical except for the motherboards being used. Nvidia’s 61.77 video card drivers were used on both systems.
Test systems
Gigabyte K8NS Pro, AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2000MHz), 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair TWINX1024-3200LL DDR400 (2-2-2-5), XFX GeForceFX 5700 Ultra (475/900), 30GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive, Windows XP SP1a
Albatron K8X800 Pro II, AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2000MHz), 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair TWINX1024-3200LL DDR400 (2-2-2-5), XFX GeForceFX 5700 Ultra (475/900), 30GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive, Windows XP SP1a
SYSmark 2004 Internet Content Creation
The overall score for SYSmark 2004 internet content creation was almost identical with the Albatron K8X800 Pro II being one point better.
SYSmark 2004 Office Productivity
With the office productivity section of SYSmark 2004 the Gigabyte K8NS Pro was five points lower than the Albatron motherboard.
RealStorm Benchmark 2004
RealStorm does not test the video card at all which makes it a great benchmark for motherboards. All of the options were left at the default except I changed the resolution to 640×480. With this benchmark the Gigabyte K8NS Pro did a little better than the Albatron.
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
The Sisoft Sandra memory bandwidth scores were also very close but the Gigabyte K8NS Pro was a little better.
Everest Home Edition Memory Benchmark
Everest is a free and good benchmarking tool for memory bandwidth. The Gigabyte K8NS Pro was a little better with the read bandwidth and the Albatron K8X800 Pro II was a little better with the write bandwidth.
dBpowerAMP
dBpowerAMP is a free music converter which I used to convert a wav to mp3. Both motherboards converted the file in exactly the same amount of time.
FarCry v1.1
Using the Fort demo at 640×480 the Albatron K8X800 Pro II did a little better than the Gigabyte motherboard.
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 does a flyby and botmatch, and was run at 640×480. With both sections of the motherboard the Albatron K8X800 Pro II does better than the Gigabyte K8NS Pro.
Comanche 4
With Comanche 4 at 640×480 the Gigabyte K8NS Pro does a little better than the Albatron K8X800 Pro II but not much.
The trend continued with 3DMark03 with the Gigabyte K8NS Pro scoring over 200 3Dmarks lower than the Albatron K8X800 Pro II.
Counter Strike: Source
Lastly I benchmarked with Counter Strike: Source which is now available for everyone to buy and play. Again we see the Albatron K8X800 Pro II doing better than the Gigabyte K8NS Pro.
Overclocking
Unfortunately due to the fact that the Athlon64 that I use for testing isn’t an overclocker I was not able to do much overclocking. I got my processor right when the 3200+ came out and were using the Clawhammer core. I got poor overclocking results with this same processor on another board and at that time thought it was the other motherboard.
I have read one other review of this motherboard and they were able to get a very high overclock using a 3400+ Newcastle core. I have also read a lot about the struggles this processor has while trying to be overclocked. I didn’t think that my processor would have lacked the overclockabilty so I must apologize to you for that.
I know the review is somewhat incomplete without a proper overclocking section but I do not want to post the results that I got due to the fact that it is my processor not the motherboard. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments about this as I would love to hear them.
Conclusion
With AMD offering both socket 754 and 939 processors now and the prices slowly starting to drop a new AMD system is easily in reach. Though I was not able to test the overclockability like I would have I am confident that with a good processor, memory, and cooling that this board could do wonders.
The benchmarks were a little lower than the Albatron K8X800 Pro II that I tested this board against but the results were very close. With this motherboard having so many great onboard features such as 8 channel audio, gigabit LAN, and firewire it practically makes for a complete setup.
Since the BIOS is multi-lingual it will benefit many people who don’t speak English while the dual BIOS feature eliminates the frustration of a bad flash. Taking everything into consideration looked at in this review I am going to give this motherboard an 8/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Gigabyte for making this review possible.
Pros
- Good overall layout
- A plethora of memory settings
- Chipset heatsink is quiet
- Onboard 7.1 audio, gigabit LAN, & firewire
- Multi-language BIOS
- DDR slots don’t interfere with AGP slot
- SATA and ATA133 IDE RAID
Cons
- Benchmark results slightly lower than expected