GA-K8NS PRO [nforce3-250] (now available at newegg)

[jamori]

I, like many other people I'm sure, have been waiting for some of the new nforce3-250 boards to come out. Chaintech put out a few that, as far as anyone can tell, just took their nf3-150 solution and dropped in the new chipset to try to take advantage of an otherwise empty market. Also, the Chaintech boards dont really seem to offer much in the way of BIOS overclocking/tweaking features, so I've steered away from it.

Today, I noticed that newegg, and a few other retailers, are beginning to offer the Gigabyte GA-K8NS PRO ($129 at newegg), based on the nf3-250 chipset. So, I ventured on over to gigabyte's website and took a look at the detailed specs. This board doesn't seem to take advantage of many of the 250's integrated controllers, but rather throws a bunch of other chips on there to take care of it.

Here's what's listed on the site for '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

Aside from the audio and gigabit ethernet (which is on the nf3-250Gb), aren't all of those things supposed to be supported by the nf3-250's chipset? I KNOW that the 250 supports sata (replaced instead by the SI sil3512), and I'm pretty sure there's support for both 1394 and raid on the chip as well.

It seems like by doing this, the mobo manufacturers are a) making their boards unnecessairily expensive/complicated and more importantly, b) decreasing performance by adding extra 3rd party chips to take care of solutions already addressed in the main chipset.

So we've now seen this issue with both chaintech AND gigabyte .. will any of the nf3-250 boards in the near future properly take advantage of the nforce's builtin features? If so, I can justify waiting for those .. otherwise, I might as well just go buy one of the nf3-150's that actually does have a working agp/pci lock and be done with it.

 

[Vette73]

Sorry but the sound and ethernet are NOT on the nForce3 chip, they are stand alone items running on the PCI bus.

This looks to be the standard nForce3 250 chip. So it does add AGP/PCI lock and True SATA but no firewall or true Non-Pci bus ethernet.

 

[yensid]

Here's a review of a non-pro pre-release version of this board, if it helps...
Hexus.net review

 

[mechBgon]

I downloaded the manual and took a look. This one is a contender for "most high-bandwidth stuff on one PCI bus" but if you go to Gigabyte's site at http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_nForce3+250.htm and look at the top model, I think it takes the top honors for that :roll: It appears that all of these are plain nF3 250, not nF3 250Gb, so that means the gigaLAN is right there hogging the PCI bus with the rest of it. Gigabyte's manuals have very clear block diagrams showing what's what.

 

[Bar81]

Concur, this is the most retarded implementation of the nForce3 250 I've seen yet. For those who buy this, enjoy the PCI bus choking...

 

[jamori]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
Sorry but the sound and ethernet are NOT on the nForce3 chip, they are stand alone items running on the PCI bus.

This looks to be the standard nForce3 250 chip. So it does add AGP/PCI lock and True SATA but no firewall or true Non-Pci bus ethernet.

Originally posted by: jamori
Aside from the audio and gigabit ethernet (which is on the nf3-250Gb), aren't all of those things supposed to be supported by the nf3-250's chipset?

just to clarify what i was saying, i know that since this is an nf3-250 and not nf3-250gb, the gigabit ethernet is not supposed to be on the chipset, nor is the audio in either case

what i was trying to point out is that due to the inclusion of the "Silicon Image sil3512 controller", it doesn't even appear that they have used the nf3-250's SATA implementation, but I suppose i could be wrong there, too, as this might just be a secondary controller. Could anyone confirm/deny this?

 

[CraigRT]

awesome, if socket 754 was the way to go right now, I'd totally order this up!

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: jamori

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
Sorry but the sound and ethernet are NOT on the nForce3 chip, they are stand alone items running on the PCI bus.

This looks to be the standard nForce3 250 chip. So it does add AGP/PCI lock and True SATA but no firewall or true Non-Pci bus ethernet.

Originally posted by: jamori
Aside from the audio and gigabit ethernet (which is on the nf3-250Gb), aren't all of those things supposed to be supported by the nf3-250's chipset?

just to clarify what i was saying, i know that since this is an nf3-250 and not nf3-250gb, the gigabit ethernet is not supposed to be on the chipset, nor is the audio in either case

what i was trying to point out is that due to the inclusion of the "Silicon Image sil3512 controller", it doesn't even appear that they have used the nf3-250's SATA implementation, but I suppose i could be wrong there, too, as this might just be a secondary controller. Could anyone confirm/deny this?

The 2 SATA ports between the AGP port and cpu are the TRUE NON-Pci Sata ports. The 2 near the outer edge are on the Pci bus.


I am waiting for a 250Gb board to come out that uses the Chips (Non-Pci) ethernet and Sata and also have a GOOD sound card (Like the Via Envy) I can't stand reltek. Low quality and high CPU drain.

 

[jamori]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
The 2 SATA ports between the AGP port and cpu are the TRUE NON-Pci Sata ports. The 2 near the outer edge are on the Pci bus.


I am waiting for a 250Gb board to come out that uses the Chips (Non-Pci) ethernet and Sata and also have a GOOD sound card (Like the Via Envy) I can't stand reltek. Low quality and high CPU drain.

I'm basically waiting for the same thing as well, minus the sound card necessity, as I already have an audigy2
.. 250gb properly using the chipset's gigabit ethernet, non-pci sata, with decent overclocking options (downward control of the multiplier, working agp/pci locks, and a high upper limit on the "fsb")
However, based on what you just said about those two sata ports, I think that this board would do for me if something better didnt come out soon, as I don't forsee upgrading my home network to gigabit any time soon, and even if i do, the solution provided here would be acceptable.

Thanks for the input

 

[Bar81]

The MSI K8N Neo Platinum should be the first to hit that is actually a well designed mobo using the nForce3 250Gb chipset features. Unfortunately, it won't be coming until late May to mid June. The only other mobo I've seen is the Epox but that has limitations...

 

[dimasukr]

I got this board and it actually uses nforce3 built-in SATA for 2 ports (with Nvidia RAID support) and then 2 external SATA (sil3112 RAID chip) in ADDITION to that.
It also has 2 additional IDE ports that support RAID.
So feature wise it is a great board.
Of course since it is non GB it doesn't have off pci gigabit ethernet but I never care for that.
As to firewall I think that nvidia one is just a software - not a big deal - XP sp2 has it too.