Supplied by Gigabyte

There are very few motherboards available that support Athlon
FX51 and Athlon FX53 940-pin processors and the Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP 940 is one
of them. Gigabyte are the most visible on the market next to the ASUS SK8N and
the rarer SK8V. The MSI K8T Master Series for 940-pin processors is even more
rare. Gigabyte has a reputation of making their flagship motherboard products
feature rich and the K8NNXP is no exception. It bests the ASUS SK8N for options
and price.

The Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP
940 features the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset like its rivals. This chipset has
many features that are a manufacturer elective to enable or not. The nForce3
chipset will again be transforming with the introduction of the 250 and 250Gb
series. For now the nForce3 150 is all that there is available. The one detail
that may cause consumers to pause prior to purchasing any 940-pin motherboard
is that the only available processors for this single socket platform are the
more expensive FX-51 and FX53. This too is compounded by the requirement for
ECC Registered ram which is another added cost over standard unbuffered memory.

The breakdown of features of the GA-K8NNXP is extensive.

Specifications

Processor

• Socket 940 for AMD Athlon64 FX and Opteron 100

Chipset

• NVIDIA nForce3 150 Platform Processor
• Super I/O: ITE IT8712F chip
• Integrated peripherals
• Silicon Image sil3512 controller
• GigaRAID ATA 133 RAID controller
• T.I. IEEE1394b controller
• Realtek 8110S Gigabit Ethernet controller
• Realtek 8201 PHY LAN chip
• Realtek ALC658 Audio AC’97 Codec

Memory

• Type: Dual Channel DDR400/ 333/ 266- Registered Memory-184pin
• Max capacity: Up to 3GB by 4 DIMM slots (Please read FAQ for further information)

Internal I/O Connectors

• 2 x Serial ATA connector
• 4 x UDMA ATA 133/100/66 Bus Master IDE connectors
• 1 x FDD connector
• 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (supports 4 ports)
• 2 x IEEE 1394b connectors (supports 3 ports)
• S/P DIF input/output pin header
• 3 x cooling fan pin headers
• CD/AUX in
• 1 x Game/Midi connector

Expansion Slots

• 1 x AGP slot (8x/4x-AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only.
• 5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.3 compliant)
• 1 x DPS slots

Rear Panel I/O

• PS/2 Keyboard / Mouse
• 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x RJ45 ports
• 2 x COM ports
• 1 x LPT
• Audio (1 x Line-in / 1 x Line-out / 1 x Mic) connector

CPU/AGP/DIMM setting

• CPU FSB / Multiplier / Vcore Voltage adjustable via BIOS
• AGP Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS
• DIMM Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS

Power

• ATX power connector and ATX 12V connector
• Power-off by Windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP shut down and switch

Form Factor

• ATX form factor
• 30.5 x 24.4 cm

H/W Monitoring

• System health status auto-detect and report by BIOS
• Hardware detecting and reporting for case open, CPU voltage, and fan speed.

BIOS

• 2 X 4M bit flash ROM, Award BIOS

Other Features

• Xpress™ Installation
• Xpress™ Recovery
• Q-Flash™
• @BIOS™

Inside the Box

Inside the box Gigabyte includes the installation CD and 3 manuals; User’s
manual, GigaRAID manual and SATA RAID manual (not shown).

The fold out quick installation manual is actually very good. Even the novice
user would be able to follow this guide.

A self-adhesive sticker is included that can be affixed to the inside of the
PC case, or should be, covers the general motherboard settings if ever the manuals
should go astray.

Gigabyte hasn’t quite caught on to the fact that case badges
should be acrylic.

Two SATA cables, 3 x 80-pin and a floppy cable are included.

Gigabyte have included a PCI external SATA connector with other top of the
line motherboard products and it’s an especially appealing concept for multimedia
users. Remember that this device does not add another two SATA headers but ports
the motherboard SATA headers to the rear of the case. Why? SATA RAID arrays
can gang 2, 4 even 8 drives together inside an external housing. This housing
then has a single SATA cable connection. Before you know it you’ve got the capability
for MASSIVE hard drive disk space and MASSIVE disk space is the key when it
comes to tasks like professional video editing.

Gigabyte thoughtfully includes two different SATA power connections. The first
image shows a configuration where a single MOLEX on the PSU could be split off
to two EIDE drives and a SATA drive. The second is for a single 4-pin MOLEX
to two SATA power connections.

The S/PDIF bracket has optical and digital out along with a center/sub rear
left/right connection to free up the backplane jacks.

Two extra USB ports, a 4-pin and a 6-pin 1394 port are on a
PCI bracket. Not many manufacturers include the 4-pin 1394 port.

Yet two more USB ports on a PCI bracket.

Gigabyte are sticking with their patented Dual Power System (DPS). In the manual
this card is refereed to as the DPVRM (Dual Power Voltage Regulator Module)
and on the box and card it is known as the DPS. DPVRM would be the more accurate
term as this daughter card does not act as a second PSU but a “6-phase
power circuit design to provide a more solid and durable power supply.”
It is not a necessary component to the motherboard and a system will function
with and without it. There was no increase in or lack of stability in the test
system regardless of using the card or not.

For a more detailed look at DPS see our review of the Gigabyte
7NNXP nForce2 motherboard.

Touring the board

A 940-pin motherboard isn’t much different from any other motherboard. It’s
layout is much the same except for changes around the socket to accommodate
a new heatsink attachment mechanism. At the top of the board (right side of
preceding image) is the DPS slot which is oddly placed. Think about it. The
DPS daughter card slides into the slot 90 degrees to the motherboard. What’s
just above the CPU area? The intake fan for a dual fan power supply is what.
The DPS daughter card will cause a disruption in direct airflow to the intake
fan of the PSU. It won’t stop or block the airflow but it will just cause eddies
and back currents. This probably won’t have any affect on overall cooling performance
but they’ll be there nonetheless.

The four-pin 12 volt connection is just out of top of the shot next to the
DPS slot.

The 940-pin socket is a drastic change for many AMD enthusiasts. The FX-51
and FX-53 processors require ECC Registered RAM which is the moment of hesitation
for some when considering a 940-pin motherboard. ECC Registered RAM is more
expensive than unbuffered memory when comparing apples to apples. There is some
high performance memory that is much more expensive than ECC Registered but
that’s another story. 939-pin processors and motherboards will soon be on the
market which may prompt potential 940-pin consumers to pause and “wait
and see”. 939-pin processors will operate with unbuffered memory and could
therefore be less expensive. Should this be a reason to wait? Not necessarily.
In today’s disposable PC society the FX-53 provides the best in processing power
at this time. ECC Registered RAM provides for a more stable platform and this
combination would make for a powerhouse of a workstation PC.

After the deluge of heatsink designs for Athlon XP the clock has been reset.
AMD has gone and changed the heatsink interface. Some manufacturers will be
able to adapt present heatsinks and others will have to introduce new versions.
The coming few months should be interesting for the variety of new heatsinks.
Overall the new clip mechanism is very secure and easy to work with.

The backside of the socket area has a rather large plate for
the heatsink mechanism.

The four memory DIMM slots are color coded. DIMM 1 and 2 are the same red color
to indicate that a module placed in each will be in dual channel mode. It’s
the same with the purple DIMMS. The ATX power connector is placed well to the
side of the board. The PSU ATX cable won’t have to annoyingly snake its way
across the motherboard with this configuration. IDE 1 and 2 and the floppy are
also located in this area. Just above the ATX POWER connector is one of three
fan headers. The PWR_FAN header would have better placed down by the front panel
connectors to facilitate proximity to a front intake fan.

Immediately below IDE 1 and 2 is the CMOS battery and a two post CLEAR CMOS
jumper. Gigabyte includes a spare jumper for this purpose. It’s a small part
so don’t lose it. It is suggested that the jumper be placed on one of the posts
for safe keeping. Placing it over both posts would clear the CMOS and the board
will not boot with it in place over the two pins.

Gigabyte’s patented DUALBIOS chips are located right next to the nForce3 MCP.
DUALBIOS is well suited to overclockers and for those who want the ultimate
in on-motherboard BIOS protection. The second BIOS takes over and flashes back
the other if one BIOS should fail due to mucking about or primary BIOS failure.
It’s Gigabytes BIOS SAVIOR concept.

The MCP is actively cooled and the fan cover is held in place by four screws.

The Colorful CF-12410B is believed to turn at 4500 RPM generating
3.8 CFM at 23.5 dB. (Exact specifications are not available for the “B”
series.

The MCP heatsink is just waiting for modders to lift off and
attach super coolers in the quest for higher overclocks.

Gigabyte uses ITE
Tech for their ATA 133 IDE RAID control. The chip is:

• Compatible with the ATA/ATAPI-6 specification and supports two IDE channels
  with 4 drives
• Supports ANSI ATA proposal PIO Modes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 with flow control, DMA
  Modes 0, 1, 2 and Ultra DMA modes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• Programmable active pulses and recovery time for data port access timing
• 512 bytes FIFO for data transfer per IDE channel
• Supports RAID 0/1/0+1 function
• Supports JBOD function
• Supports Scatter/Gather function for DMA/UDMA transfer
• Supports pre-fetch and post-write function for PIO mode per IDE channel
• Includes one embedded CPU and firmware on our chip to handle the RAID function.
  It can reduce the driver’s loading and improve the system’s stability

GigaRAID is for ATA 133 drives and two headers are well-placed at the bottom
right corner of the motherboard. (Orientation: backplane is on the left.)

The Silicon Image 3512
SataLink is the PCI-to-Serial ATA Host Controller providing 1.5 Gbps (150 MB/s)
connections to the hard drive(s). The SATA RAID software supports RAID 0 and
RAID one only for this SATA setup.

The pull-out AGP pin for securing the video card can be awkward to reach at
times. For that matter the lifter style mechanism on other motherboards can
be hard to reach as well. It’s a six of one half dozen of the other point.

Two 1394 headers are at the bottom of the motherboard; one for the included
1394 PCI bracket and one with exposed pins for a front panel device. One of
the two red SATA headers can be seen at the far right.

From the REALTEK
website:

The ALC658 has six 20-bit DAC channels, two pairs of stereo 18-bit ADC,
and an AC’97 2.3 compatible six-channel audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia
systems. The ALC658 incorporates proprietary converter technology to achieve
100dB sound quality, meeting performance requirements on PC99/2001 systems and
placing PC sound quality at the same level as consumer equipment.

The ALC658 CODEC provides three pairs of stereo outputs, with 6-bit volume
controls and multiple stereo and mono inputs, along with flexible mixing, and
gain and mute functions to provide a complete integrated audio solution for
PCs. The digital interface circuitry of the ALC658 CODEC operates from a 3.3V
power supply for use in notebook and PC applications. The ALC658 integrates
50mW/20ohm headset audio amplifiers at Front-Out and AUX. Both are designed
to be analog inputs and outputs automatically detected by hardware (Universal
Audio Jack®).

The ALC658 is a more comprehensive package offering a bit more than ASUS’s
ALC650. 3DMARK 2003 show that 60 voices is not supported which is the downside
of both ALC650 and ALC658 audio chips.

Realtek also gives Gigabyte the Gigabit ethernet capability. Gigabit is faster
than standard 10/100 NIC cards and ports. Gigabit won’t make the Internet faster
but it will make moving data back and forth between other Gigabit equipped systems
that much faster. The key is OTHER Gigabit systems. If a Gigabit system plugs
into a 10/100 router then you can only go as fast as your slowest speed.

Down at the bottom left are the IR, Game Connector and white AUX IN connections.
Tucked away behind those is one of three fan headers. This particular header
is oddly placed unless Gigabyte thinks that a PCI card would require a 12 volt
cooling fan. Modders rejoice but this may have been better placed between the
backplane and the socket.

The CD IN, S/PDIF and Surround headers.

The backplane features PS/2 mouse and keyboard, dual lan, two USB ports, parallel
and com ports and jack sensing surround/line in/mic in jacks. Gigabyte could
have easily used the space below the upper LAN connection for two more USB ports
and it is a shame that they didn’t. It would not have meant for more USB ports
but it would have freed up a PCI slot that would be occupied by the 2nd, if
necessary, included PCI USB bracket.

BIOS

Gigabyte’s BIOS menu is a two stage menu; simple and advanced. The advanced
features are accessed by pressing the CTL F1 keys. Athlon 64 menus are the same
as any other AWARD BIOS menu to a certain point.

Speculative TLB Reloads (Translation Look-aside Buffer) is capable of anticipating
(speculative) reloading of data. It has been read that this must be disabled
for a 64-bit OS to work. (Unverified). LDT (Lightning Data Transport) Downstream
Width affects the data moving from the CPU to the system through AMD’s HyperTransport
paths. NVIDIA’s nForce3 150 has a setting of AUTO or 8-bits. 16-bits is the
highest and it is unknown why NVIDIA held back the speed.

DDR timings are fully adjustable.

The INTEGRATED PERIPHERALS menu sees the addition of control
over the GigaRAID (enabled/disabled).

Okay…who hasn’t seen the POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP screen?

Or the PNP/PCI CONFIGURATIONS screen?

The PC HEALTH STATUS menu has simplistic enough settings. Nice
temperature of the FX-53 CPU there isn’t it?

Overclocking features look inviting enough but there is a pitfall with FX processors.
The FX-53 comes unlocked from the factory so changing the multipliers is simple.
Then a oc’er may want to bump up the CPU overclock in big jumps or 1 MHz at
a time and that’s where things fall apart. Overclocking FX processors, now with
the memory controller on-die, is a pain. It’s a challenge and a task that some
will be obsessed about beating and others will give up. Changing the CPU overclock
by even 1 MHz in both ASUS and Gigabyte systems brought everything to a grinding
halt. CPU overclock just doesn’t affect the CPU…it affects the “front
side bus” of everything from the HyperTransport Bus to the Video Card and
back but it’s there from 200-300 MHz in 1 MHz increments.

AGP Overclock is available from 66 to 100 MHz in 1 MHz increments.

It would be an interesting concept to further fine tune the CPU ratio multipliers
with CPU overclock presenting such a challenge. Imagine 10.1 x, 10.2 x, 10.3
x and so on.

CPU voltage control is available from 0.800 volts to only 1.7
volts.

We’re going to assume that the VDDQ VOLTAGE CONTROL affects
the AGP voltage.

VCC12_HT VOLTAGE CONTROL allows a user to try to cook the HyperTransport
Bus with a little extra juice.

The BIOS, like other AMD Athlon 64 BIOS’, leaves a little bit to be desired
with the overclocking crowd. This is by design of the processor and the FSB
flexibility is no longer there. No doubt that a whole new set of rules will
be forged for overclocking Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processors and perhaps
someone will bring out a BIOS with smaller increments for multipliers.

Benchmarks.

The test systems.

• AMD FX-53 Processor
  (32-bit mode)
• Gigabyte
  K8NNXP 940 motherboard
• ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 4.2 drivers (Application preference ticked for Anti-Aliasing
  and Anisotropic Filtering in both Direct 3D and OpenGL, VSYNC disabled BIOS
  AGP aperture set to 256)
• 2 x 512 MB Crucial
  PC3200 ECC REG DDR RAM in DIMM 1 and 3
• Sony 52x CD
• 80 GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive
• Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Optical Mouse
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
• AMK SX1000
  modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 updated.

• AMD FX-53 Processor
  (32-bit mode)
• ASUS SK8N motherboard
• ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 4.2 drivers (Application preference ticked for Anti-Aliasing
  and Anisotropic Filtering in both Direct 3D and OpenGL, VSYNC disabled BIOS
  AGP aperture set to 256)
• 2 x 512 MB Crucial
  PC3200 ECC REG DDR RAM in DIMM 1 and 3
• Sony 52x CD
• 80 GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive
• Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Optical Mouse
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
• AMK SX1000
  modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 updated.

Programs used

• 
  Sisoft Sandra 2004
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2001 SE
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2003
• Quake
  III Arena
• GL
  Excess
• SpecviewPerf 7.1
• Serious Sam SE
• Splinter Cell (Chinese Embassy timedemo)
• Unreal Tournament 2003 flyby benchmarks
• Aquamark3
• Jurassic Park Operation Genesis (Exercise cut scene/FRAPS)
• Call of Duty demo (40,000 frames played x 3 passes averaged)
• X2
  Demo
• Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (Railgun demo)
• Fraps
• Adobe After Effects 5.5
• Softimage 2.0.1

All tests were run at default video card settings with VSYNC disabled. Anti-Aliasing
and Anisotropic Filtering was left ticked for application preference. AGP aperture
was set to 256 MB. DirectX 8.1 was used only for 3DMARK 2001 SE and Splinter
Cell tests. DirectX 90b was installed for all other tests. Windows visual effects
was set for ADJUST FOR BEST PERFORMANCE. Windows was restarted before each test.
An process idle command was executed before each test.

Individual performance will vary with any particular or specific timings or
tweaks enabled by you. A 768 MB page file was moved to D: partition. Temporary
Internet files moved to J: partition at end of drive. OS installed to C: and
programs installed to E:. All programs were benchmarked with initial monitor
settings at 1024×768@75Hz.

3DMark 2001 SE

3D Mark 2001 SE and it’s replacement, 3D Mark 2003, answer the simple question
of how fast the hardware is; all of the hardware that powers the game.

3DMark 2003

3D Mark 2003 was originally designed to measure performance specifically in
shader-heavy titles.

SiSoft Sandra 2004

Aquamark3

Aquamark3 is a newer benchmark from Massive Development. For the most part
it is a DirectX 8.1 benchmark though it is run with DirectX 90b installed. Four
measurement sets were used. The first has high and low detail with Anti Aliasing
and Anisotropic filtering turned off. The second has high and low detail with
Anti-Aliasing (6x) and Anisotropic filtering (16x) set at max.

GL Excess

GL Excess is an OPENGL benchmark that is optimized for DX8.1 as can be seen
by the differences between DirectX software.

Quake III high quality

Quake III continues to hang around. This benchmark is one that
most can’t just let go of and it retains grandfather rights in the community.
Many of today’s games are based upon the Quake engine.

Serious Sam

UT2003 Flyby

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory: Railgun timedemo

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory uses an improved version of the heavily
modified Quake III engine from Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The Railgun time
demo results were recorded.

X2 Rolling Demo

X2 – The Threat is a teaser with a benchmark option for Egosoft’s
upcoming release. It does not use pixel shaders.

Call of Duty Demo

Call of Duty is a new game thus using the latest in optimizations.
FRAPS was used to record the average number of frames per second over a minimum
of 100,000 played frames. Call of Duty also finds its roots in the Quake III
engine. Call of Duty consistently froze on the SK8N therefore could not complete
a benchmark.

Specviewperf 7.1

SpecviewPerf measures the 3D rendering performance of systems
running under OPENGL.

The following two tests are targeted mainly towards CPU performance and will
show if any “flaws” are in board design affecting the ability of the
CPU to crunch through the data. While in render mode the two test programs virtually
bypass ram and GPU.

Adobe After Effects 5.5

Adobe After Effects is a tool to produce motion
graphics and visual effects for film, video, multimedia and the web. It is primarily
a 2D application using imported graphics or digital footage or self generated
effects. A project was created that was a combination of many video footage
files, resizing and rasterizing effects, text animations and multiple layer
effects. This “average” combination was felt to best demonstrate advantages
and/or disadvantages that a real world user may experience rather than isolating
and benchmarking a particular effect.

There is no official benchmark for After Effects
but tasks can be timed to show specific results. Rendering, or the task of building
and compiling frames, is mainly CPU intensive and After Effects generally bypasses
the video card and relies solely on the processor for speed. The time taken
to render 900 frames basically shows how fast the processor is working on the
given task.

Softimage XSI can simply bring
any computer to its knees. It’s an incredibly powerful 3D animation program
that has the ability to become so complex that single processor systems have
been known to “think” for days when rendering an animation. Softimage works
on somewhat similar principle to After Effects. A faster and more powerful video
card will translate to a smoother interface where complex scenes can be manipulated
in real time. Note that Softimage does not have an interface to real-time preview
a finished frame as unlike After Effects. Users can manipulate objects in a
choice of views from wire frame mode to simulated real-time shading mode. In
order to look at a finished frame a user must render the frame to disk which
bypasses the GPU. A faster processor will result in the faster render. The amount
of RAM is not as great an issue as the user is working frame by frame and the
graphics card is doing the bulk of the work while working within the GUI.

This is a most basic overview and there are specialty
hardware components that can enhance the speed and interactivity of complex
3D scenes and programs. The designers working on the test system use Softimage
on a less complex level to provide enhancements and elements to commercials,
promos and station ID elements. Though their work is quite complex to some it
a far cry from that of special effects in major film productions.

Benchmark Conclusions

It’s a draw. Half of the time the Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP Pro just edges out the
ASUS SK8N and the other half of the time it’s the other way around. The only
major bump in the process was that the SK8N would not run Call of Duty. The
game kept freezing.

Overclocking

Allegedly the FX-51 processors are edging nearer to 3 GHz under exotic cooling.
Speed costs and FX-53 may not surpass that mark because FX-53 comes from the
same stock as FX-51. The FX-53 multiplier allowed the processor to be bumped
up to 2600 MHz darn fast on air but then promptly stopped when asked to go a
bit further. It wouldn’t turn over at 2700 MHz nor would it accept even a 1
MHz bump with CPU OVERCLOCK. The CPU OVERCLOCK function bumps the entire board
up in speed. That means everything is overclocked which is going to be a pain
for overclockers who like to tweak individual settings. All it takes is one
component to not want to go there…and it won’t.

Conclusions

The Gigabyte
GA-K8NNXP 940 stands at the top of the list. It does so simply because it
comes with more on the motherboard and in the box than the ASUS SK8N. It also
runs neck in neck with the SK8N in benchmarks. Gigabyte is a top tier vendor.
There are some that swear by the Gigabyte product and others who swear at it.
This is true of any motherboard platform. ASUS has a reputation for stability
yet the ASUS SK8N test sample was “quirky” but out of the box. There
were some memory issues and Call of Duty would consistently freeze. Meanwhile
the Gigabyte GA-8KNNXP 940 was completely stable and easy to work with.

Why does the lower priced K8NNXP 940 beat the ASUS SK8N for features? A simple
chart explains it all.

Our thanks to Gigabyte
for their support of this and many other sites.