If you've been paying attention to our reviews, you'll notice that we here at Computer Mechanix have completely steered away from 32-bit processors whether you're talking about Intel's Pentium line-up or AMD's Athlon XPs. Now, we're completely into the AMD Athlon 64 processors and they, of course, require motherboards all of their own. To make matters worse, there are two different kinds of AMD Athlon 64 processors - Socket 754 and socket 939. The numbers refer to the number of pins each processor connects to the motherboard with, and now 754-pin processors are being phased out in favor of the newer 939-pins.

Because of this, we've decided to review a new socket-939 motherboard from Gigabyte, their GA-K8NS Ultra 939 board (oddly, motherboard manufacturers never name their motherboards with cool names like "The Lazer 939" or "Hyperspeed" but always use a collection of numbers and letters... dull).

Gigabyte's GA-K8NS is based on the Nvidia nForce3 chipset, a well-featured and hearty chipset that we absolutely adore. In fact, we've loved every one of Nvidia's different nForce chipsets (minus the ill-mannered nForce3 150Gb, but they fixed that situation real quick).

The Gigabyte board comes with everything you could really want built-on: it has 4 DDR DIMM sockets for your memory (opposed to many other boardmakers who are still putting only 3 on their boards) supporting up to 4GB of memory running in Dual Channel, five PCI slots, an AGP slot, two in-BIOS Serial ATA controllers and two out-of-BIOS Serial ATA controllers, plus 8-channel audio, two nics (one Gigabit and one 10/100 Ethernet), two 1394b firewire ports, and eight USB2.0 ports.

We were a little disappointed that the board didn't come with more Serial ATA ports considering ASUS's K8N-E Deluxe motherboard came with a total of six, but most companies aren't jumping on the Serial ATA bandwagon with such force lately, so you can't really knock Gigabyte for saving a couple bucks (especially when the ASUS board is socket 754 and costs $20 more).

The Gigabyte board performs as one would expect, returning scores that are very reasonable in our tests. We've compared it to our 3200+ socket 754 system so you can see how it breaks down:

Athlon 64 3200+ (socket 754) System
CPU Score: 7145
Memory Score: 8067
HDD Score: 1556

Athlon 64 3500+ (socket 939) System
CPU Score: 7186
Memory Score: 10746
HDD Score: 1615

You'll notice that the speed differences between the two aren't extreme unless you look at the memory score. The socket 939 chips handle the memory processing within the processor itself which bumps the memory speed significantly and, thus, increases the overall performance of the system. It takes a little getting used to, but it works.

As for what's in the box, Gigabyte got a little strange on us. Included are two port add-ons (for additional USB and Firewire connectors), a molex-to-two-SATA power converter, two SATA cables, the manuals, the back panel, one floppy ribbon cable, and... strangely enough... one IDE ribbon cable. This was surprising as most motherboard companies give you two IDE cables. In an era where people have multiple hard drives, multiple CD-ROM drives, ZIP drives, and more, having just one ribbon cable seemed a little skimpy to us.

Installation of the drivers can be problematic. Windows XP Professional did not seem to enjoy the RAID controller provided for the Silicon Image 3512A onboard controller. In addition, the installation program is quite cumbersome and requires reboots repeatedly. Also, don't expect the help content to be written with proper English grammar -- "Computer to be rebooted" is one of our favorite notifications.

In addition to the driver installation being a little frustrating at times, Gigabyte didn't provide any temperature monitoring or RAID-driver-disk making programs. These features are standard fare at some of our other favorite motherboard manufacturers and although some people might aruge that we've been spoiled, you'll notice when these items aren't there if you're used to having them.

At any rate, the Gigabyte board is rock-solid with regards to stability and simple to install. We're happy with its performance, compatibility, and overall price. If you're looking to upgrade to the land of 64-bit processing, you can't really go wrong with this board. However, if you're looking for a few extra features like additional SATA ports, ribbon cables, or extra software, the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 may be a little skimpier than you would like.

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