44 MA XIMUMPC MAY 2005
The featurific SLI boards are the obvious
winners in this contest. The two Ultra
boards in this roundup are practically
barren of features—they seem designed
to go into generic white boxes destined
for a corporate environment. Yawn.
Forced to pick between the two Ultras,
however, we’d give the nod to the
Foxconn, with its superior documenta-
tion, feature-rich BIOS, better mix of PCI-
E and PCI slots, and built-in FireWire.
The board also supports an auxiliary
power connector, for people who want
to run 6800GT/Ultra-class cards with
their 20-pin PSUs.
The SLI category is more of a contest.You’ll note that we gave
both SLI boards identical
scores. That’s because each
has moves the other lacks.
The MSI K8N features 24-bit
DACs and the Live! DSP. It
also plumbs its RAID controller into PCI
Express for improved RAID performance,
and it supports SATA 3Gb and two forms
of command queuing. The K8N is also
one of the lowest-cost SLI boards we’ve
seen to date, with prices in the $170 to
$180 range. In the minus column, the MSI
doesn’t afford you any extra PCI-E slots
if you’re running SLI, and one of its two
NICs is just Fast Ethernet.The DFI, on the other
hand, features an annoy-
ing, yet ultimately more
useable, PCI Express
configuration. This is also
the first board we’ve seen
that moves its onboard audio codec and
jacks onto a module. In the minus col-
umn, the audio components are limited
to 16-bit, so we’re not really sure about
the module’s pay-off.
This board is also more expensive, but
DFI includes a kit to sleeve your cables, a
mesh carrying case for your PC, rounded
cables, and a front bay with POST lights
and SATA, optical, and USB ports.MOTHERBOARDS:A-ZMAKE FOXCONN CHAINTECH MSI DFI
Model WinFast NF4UK8AA VNF/Ultra K8N SLI Platinum LAN Party NF4-SLI DR
Storage 4 SATA, 2 PATA 4 SATA, 2 PATA 6 SATA, 2 PATA 8 SATA, 2 PATA
NIC Gigabit/ Vitesse PHY Gigabit/ Vitesse PHY Dual Gigabit Marvell PHY Dual Gigabit Ethernet, Marvell/
Vitesse PHY
Expansion slots 1 x16 PCI-E, 2 x1 PCI-E,
4 PCI1 x16 PCI-E, 2 x1 PCI-E,
3 PCI2 x16 PCI-E, 3 PCI 2 x 16 PCI-E, 1 x1, 1x2Audio Realtek ALC850 Realtek ALC850 Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Realtek ALC850 on riser card
USB/FireWire 4 ports +2 headers USB, 1
FireWire4 ports + 3 headers USB 4 ports +3 headers USB, 1
FireWire port + 2 headers6 ports + 2 headers USB, 1 port +
1 header FireWire
Mode X16 X16 SLI x8x8 SLI x8x8
PC Mark 2004 Overall 5,299 5,282 4,719 4,785
PC Mark 2004 CPU 4,870 4,913 4,837 4,889PC Mark 2004 Memory 5,800 5,703 5,789 5,856
PC Mark 2004 Graphics 7,951 7,935 7,180 7,312
PC Mark 2004 HDD 6,263 6,205 6,200 6,186
3DMark2001 SE OV 26,274 26,087 29,518 29,531
3DMark2003 OV 13,194 13,171 21,404 21,392
3DMark2003 CPU 1,192 1,184 1,141 1,1423DMark2005 OV 5,527 5,537 9,742 9,758
3DMark2005 CPU 5,441 5,205 5,475 5,283
Quake III 535 445 481 486
Doom 3 114 113.3 124.4 123.9
AquaMark Overall 73,841 72,744 85,932 85,317
AquaMark GFX 10,788 10,677 13,545 13,470
AquaMark CPU 11,699 11,413 11,747 11,631
Sandra 2005 6,049 6,025 6,066 6,091
HD Tach 3.0 AVG 64.1MB/s 64.2MB/s 64.3MB/s 63.9MB/sAnd the winner is...
BENCHMARKS
Best scores are bolded.LOOKING FOR AN INTEL MOBO?
Our advice is to wait. It just doesn’t
make sense to build an Intel system that
doesn’t support the new dual-core P4s.