Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Available at New Egg

[rileychris]

LINK

 

[jterrell]

That link goes to nf3 board bro.

edit: I saw it says both actually but has the pci-E so has to be nf4. I'd hate to order this though til they got that cleared up. Nasty typo in there.

 

[QuestMGD]

It is NF4, but it is not an ULTRA board. You can see by lack of a Gig ethernet port.
There are various other more significant differences between this and an Ultra, such as Hypertransport speed.

If you were waiting for state-of-the-art product anyways, why not wait for a full function nf4 board?

 

[rileychris]

Yeah I thought it was nforce3 at first too, but I had searched for "nforce4" and then after reading teh description I realized they just had a typo in the title. I am waiting for a reasonably priced Ultra myself, but thought others might want this.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Originally posted by: QuestMGD
It is NF4, but it is not an ULTRA board. You can see by lack of a Gig ethernet port.
There are various other more significant differences between this and an Ultra, such as Hypertransport speed.

If you were waiting for state-of-the-art product anyways, why not wait for a full function nf4 board?

This board has a Gigabit port. The nForce4 non-Ultra chipset has the same feature set as the nForce3 Ultra, but with PCI-E support and no AGP support.

This is a $119 motherboard, compared to the over $180 (so far) nForce4 Ultra boards, that's why people may want it . Not everyone wants to pay more just to have the latest and greatest stuff.

 

[QuestMGD]

Sorry, to clarify, I meant that it lacked a SECOND gig ethernet port.
Anyways, I understand the concept of a $120 vs. $180 m/b, but I was considering the fact that there seem to be alleged design and bios problems with the nforce4, why not stick with a NF3 board if you were concerned with a good deal.

That's just an opinion of someone who has a 939 AMD64, and PCI-e 6600GT sitting in my room without a system to put them in.

 

[anonhart]

I have had a complete build waiting since October for a motherboard. So, after waiting endlessly for my ASUS A8N-SLI, I canceled my backorders and just went with this vanillla, yet much cheaper Gigabyte. I figure it's way cheaper than the $300 I was going to drop for the A8N-SLI, and even if the GA-K8NF-9 isn't floating my boat, I will probably have a really great, affordable selection of other boards to choose from in six months - with all the bugs worked out them to boot. And, the two boards will probably still be less than the 300+ I almost spent. on the A8N-SLI.

Now, on another note I do have a question for everyone out there. I read both the A8N-SLI and the GA-K8NF-9 manuals and saw no reference to clock locked PCI and SATA. Is it a given that all boards after NForce3 Rev. 2 will have the PCI slots and SATA clock locked? I'd hate to OC and fry my PCI cards or corrupt my SATA HD. Please help!

Thanks,
Al

 

[gobucks]

uh, guys, the non-ultra is pretty stripped down. Here are the differences.
1) No SATA-II support
2) No Activearmor (hardware firewall with offloading)
3) HTT speed limited to 4X (hence the 4X chipset name on newegg), corresponding to 800MHz
4) NO OVERCLOCKING SUPPORT!!!!!! The HTT speed is completely locked, as is the multiplier, making the board useless for overclocking.

So anonhart, i'd cancel that order while you still can, cause you're gonna be pissed when you can't overclock at all. Besides, sellers are starting to preorder A8N-SLIs in the $180-190 range, so i have no doubt that the Ultras will hit sub-$150 soon.

 

[jgiants]

Your saying it dont even have FSB adjustments?

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

I just checked the board's manual, FSB can be selected from 200-400MHz.

 

[QuestMGD]

I think I read in an online review that the Gigabyte boards including Ultra and SLI did not have PCI lock. Is this something that can be updated in a BIOS update afterwards if I get a board that initially does not have PCI lock?

I can live with the limited Vdimm adjustments, but I think the board will be seriously limited without a PCI lock.

TIA for any assistance.

 

[anonhart]

I invite anyone to try and follow up on this as well (as I am sure many of you know the techno-speak much better than I do), but I just got off the phone with Gigabyte tech support. The person I talked to told me that the GA-K8NF-9 was in fact overclockable, and the FSB was adjustable. I was also told that that PCI and SATA were locked by default. Now, I didn't get his permission to quote him or anything, so even though I was told this, please take it purely as speculation. I'd hate for anyone to run out and buy this board and find out otherwise. As for me, my board has already been packaged for shipping at newegg, and I couldn't cancel the order now if I wanted to. If anyone is interested I will let you know what I find when it shows up in a couple of days.

 

[gobucks]

well, when i read nvidia's announcement of the nforce4 a month or 2 ago, it said there was no overclocking support on the NF4 vanilla. I guess it's possible that they changed their minds, particularly due to competition from the Xpress 200 and K8T890 boards, or that mobo makers have decided to bypass this limitation in some way, but i know i read like 10 release articles and they all said the same thing. I hope you're right, and the board does overclock, but with the A2 or A1 silicon, i wouldn't hold my breath on getting very far, even if the FSB is adjustable (if the HT link can't go higher than 800MHz with a 4X multiplier, i don't hold much hope of it hitting 1GHz with a 4X multiplier either.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

To be honest I don't remember reading any articles saying the nForce4 is not overclockable. In fact, the nTune tool for overclocking also supports the nForce4.

"All 3 versions of the nF4 chipset, even the basic nForce4 value version, support nTune."
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...oc.aspx?i=2248&p=6

Being limited to 800MHz doesn't limit overclocking; see the DFI nF3-250Gb motherboard, and it doesn't have a negative impact on performance too. From this article:

"We noticed virtually no performance difference when running at a much lower HTT speed. In contrary, the nForce3 chipset even runs a bit slower at 5x HTT."

 

[amheck]

Does anyone have a link which explains the differences in the various NF4 chipsets?

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

I think this sums it up pretty well.

 

[jgiants]

Well its outa stock now and the price increased 10 bucks so obviously people bought it. I nearly did yesterday but did not and now I wish maybe I would have since HT speed dont look like it matters alot and the extra features in the ultra seam mostly fluff/not really needed.

Course only question is max FSB stable wise with it, which we should find out soon. Since I woulda paired it with a 3000+, if it dont go high fsb can use a 3200+ instead I guess.


I need a pci-e board pretty bad because I am sitting on what I think is a 6800 ultra pci-e reference board I bought in the refurb section of one of the main etailers online for 255.

Need to get it into a board for testing before return protection expires on credit card, incase its dead.