ECS NFORCE4 A939

"This review compares two budget motherboards the ECS Nforce4 A939 (Nforce4) and the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 (ULI M1695) using a GeForce 6600 GT and Athlon64 3000. The ECS Nforce4 A939 is an inexpensive motherboard for Socket 939 processors with limited overclocking ability but still delivers good performance. The Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 is also a budget motherboard but is very feature packed with Sata2, the cpu upgrade slot for Socket AM2 processors and the ability to run 8x AGP or 16x PCI Express video cards."

"The ECS Nforce4 A939 motherboard is a board for the budget buyer looking for the latest Socket 939 Processor support but without the high price of the more advanced Socket 939 motherboards. Due to the ECS Nforce4 A939 being a budget motherboard it lacks features like Firewire and has only limited Overclocking ability. However the ECS Nforce4 A939 still does have alot of the latest technology like the Nvidia Nforce4 (not Ultra) chipset, Sata with Raid, USB 2.0 and Dual Channel DDR. The ECS Nforce4 A939 has the usual extras like 4 DDR slots in Dual Channel configuration which allows upto 4GB Memory to be installed onto the motherboard and 4 Sata headers for the latest hard drives. The ECS Nforce4 A939 comes with a single PCIE 16x slot which it allows the ECS Nforce4 A939 to use all of the latest video cards, however with the ECS Nforce4 A939 being a budget motherboard it doesn't support SLI due to the lack of the second PCIE 16x slot."

ECS NFORCE4 A939 FEATURES

NVIDIA FIREWALL Protects your PC from intruders by filtering unauthorized traffic.

HT 2000 More bandwidth, low latency, and better efficiency.

NVRAID Uniquely allows users to assign an extra disk to any RAID volume so that should a disk failure occur NVIDIA RAID will automatically remote the failed disk and replace it with the spare.

USB 2.0 Speeds up to 480Mb/s for easy connectivity and ultra-fast data transfers.

nVIDIA PCI EXPRESS Doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X, delivering 4GB/s of upstream data transfer and 4 GB/s of downstream data transfer.

6-CHANNEL AUDIO High-quality 6-channel audio brings a more vivid experience.

GIGABIT LAN Gigabit LAN supporting a high transfer rate up to 1 Gb/s.

DUAL DDR-400 Doubles the bandwidth of your system memory up to 6.4GB/s.

SERIAL ATA Supports Serial ATA HDD running at 150MB/s.

ATA133 Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE, data transfer rate up to 133MB/s.

COLOR MAP Color-coded pin headers and slots make it easy to match plug.

NTUNE Easy, safe and high performance over-clocking for Nforce. Performance wizards allow automatic tuning for optimal performance or the quietest operation.

ECS NFORCE4 A939 SPECIFICATIONS

CPU

Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64/ Athlon 64 FX processor.
High-performance Hyper Transport CPU interface.
Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second.

CHIPSET

NVIDIA nForce4 single chip.

MEMORY

Dual-channel DDR memory architecture.
4 x184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM socket support up to 4 GB.
Support DDR400/333/266 unbuffered DDR SDRAM.

EXPANSION SLOT

1 x PCI Express x16 slot.
2 x PCI Express x1 slots.
3 x PCI slots.

STORAGE

4 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices.
4 x Serial ATA devices.
RAID0, RAID1 & RAID 0+1 configuration.

AUDIO

Realtek ALC655 6-Channel audio Codec.
Compliant with AC'97 2.3 specification.

LAN

Marvell 88E1111 Giga LAN PHY.

REAR PANEL I/O

1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors.
4 x USB ports.
1 x RJ45 LAN connector.
1 x Serial port (COM1).
1 x SPDIF out connector (optional).
1 x Audio port (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in).
1 x Parallel port (LPT1).

INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS

1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector.
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector.
1 x FDD connector supports two 360K~2.88MB FDDs.
2 x IDE connectors.
4 x Serial ATA connectors.
1 x IrDA for SIR header.
3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports.
1 x Front panel switch/LED header.
1 x Front panel audio header.
1 x CD in header.
CPUFAN/NB_FAN/CASFAN connectors.

SYSTEM BIOS

Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM.
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI.
Supports ACPI revision 1.0B specification.

FORM FACTOR

ATX Size 305mm 244mm

NAME	CHIPSET	MEMORY	FSB	PCIE	AGP	SPECIAL FEATURE	PRICE
ECS NFORCE4 A939	NFORCE4	400MHZ	1000MHZ	x16	N/A	NTUNE	$62 (£45)
ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2	ULI M1695	400MHZ	1000MHZ	x16	8x	AM2 CPU SLOT	$67 (£46)
NAME	CHIPSET	MEMORY	FSB	PCIE	AGP	SPECIAL FEATURE	PRICE