I was replying to someone elses post with my experiences with the board, but since I'm writing up a decent amount I may as well put it in it's own thread for those interested in the board.
I've actually been quite pleasantly surprised with the board, I really wan't expecting much more then a mediocre stopgap solution until decent nForce 4 Ultra solutions became available.
I've had no stability issues at all, and surprisingly enough it runs perfectly with 4GB of RAM at 2-2-10-2-2 at PC3200.
Performance should of course be sign identical to NF4 Ultra boards, as the 800MHz HTT limitation is pretty much a moot point, given that the performance difference is nonexistent. Being limited to 1.5Gb/s SATA is of course no limitation as even 15K RPM SCSI solutions aren't utilizing that kind of bandwidth let alone consumer SATA drives.
The BIOS options while not the best I've seen are certainly well above average. Extremely DIMM timing adjustment, that should be easily more then adequate for anyone.
CPU bus frequency can be adjusted in 1MHz increments up to 400MHz... though of course no board would ever have a prayer of actually hitting 400MHz bus but that's beside the point.
PCI/PCI-E buses are locked, and manually adjustable in 1MHz increments as well.
Clock multiplier is adjustable as one would expect. HTT multiplier is adjustable as well.
You have some limited ability to o/c the graphcs card core/mem clock, though frankly I'd just disable then and overclock the graphics card manually, as I'm not fond of motherboards bumping up the graphics card clockspeed by some indeterminate amount.
CPU voltage is adjustable from 1.1V to 1.75V, in .25V increments from 1.1V up to 1.55, and .5V increments thereafter which should be perfectly adequate unless your venturing into extreme cooling.
PCI-E bus voltage can be adjusted up to + 0.3V, HTT link voltage is also adjustable up to + 0.3V as well.
DDR voltage is adjustable up to + 0.2V... not as high as some extreme memory modules might like, but decent.
All considered the BIOS flexibility is quite good, and he board is completely stable even at very strenuous RAM timings with all banks filled. It performs as one would expect, I've had no performance issues with it.
The current BIOS does seem to have an intermittant issue with PS/2 keyboards not detecting properly, which I've seen mentioned on a few forums. Not as issue for me, as I use a USB keyboard but worth keeping in mind if your using a legacy PS/2 keyboard until a BIOS update fixes it.
The board overclockes extremely well, better then some high end NF3 boards would overclock.
I've had the board up to 286MHz HTT stable, I've yet to test it beyond that but even if that's the absolute limit which I'm inclined to doubt it should provide more then adequate room to heavily overclock any S939 A64.
The boards feature set is merely passable, but decent for it's intended market segment.
2X UDMA 133 ports/4X SATA ports. 3X IEEE 1394b ports, and up to 10 USB 2.0 ports. 1 CICADA8201 Gigabit Ethernet port. 3X PCI, 2X PCI-E 1X, and 1X PCI-E 16X ports. The onboard audio is pretty much average, using the Realtek ALC850 codec.
4 USB 2.0 ports provided on the backpanel, with an adapter provided to plug in to utilize more. You'll need to purchase a connector to utilize the IEEE 1394b ports however.
24pin PSU connector, but the board works fine with only a 20pin PSU as well.
How one prefers a motherboard to be laid out, is bound to differ from person to person but I'm not terrible enthusiastic about the motherboard layout myself.
linky
You can examine the layout on Gigabyte's site, so I won't comment to much on it here.
I do like the locations of the ATX +12V connector at the upper left corner just behind the backpanel PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector.
I've never been pleased with boards that position the main 24pin ATX connector right beside the FDD connector on the left side of the board as this one does though.
With some rather large capacitors right around the CPU socket, the board may not cope well with some overly large OEM HeatSinks, though you should have sufficient clearance for most.
The single system fan connector is located at the bottom right corner of the board, not my ideal location as I'd prefer it above the first PCI-E slot towards the middle of the board but others may feel differently.
The SATA/PATA ports are all placed exactly where I'd like them, no qualms there.
The extra USB connectors are all placed nicely, as are the IEEE 1394 connectors.
The clear CMS jumper is located beside the SATA connectors.
The case front panel connections are all clearly identified on the motherboard.
A longer PCI-E X16 graphics card will hang over the HSF covering the NF4 chipset without much clearance at all, so you'll be hard pressed to get a better HSF on it.
Thankfully the HSF used is decent, it seems to cool adequately and isn't particularly obtrusive at all with the case closed.
The HTT ratio set at 2X may not be well optimized for overclocking yet, as I'm only able to hit 280MHz bus with the HTT multiplier at 2X, whereas I've tested up to 3X at 286MHz bus.
The supposed limitation of 800MHz HTT doesn't seem to hurt much, without bumping up the HTT link voltag at all I can use the 4X multiplier up to a 254MHz bus speed which equates to 1016MHz HTT bus.
With the HTT Link voltage set to + .3V, I can use the 4X multipler up to 268MHz bus... a 1072MHz HTT bus speed, well in excess of the A2 revision NF4 chipset, and above that of the A3 revision used on NF4 Ultra/SLI boards.
Given the price point the board is selling at and the relatively limited alternatives I'm am quite pleased with it, and it seems like it should be a very solid option for those that don't mind the average feature set.
I've actually been quite pleasantly surprised with the board, I really wan't expecting much more then a mediocre stopgap solution until decent nForce 4 Ultra solutions became available.
I've had no stability issues at all, and surprisingly enough it runs perfectly with 4GB of RAM at 2-2-10-2-2 at PC3200.
Performance should of course be sign identical to NF4 Ultra boards, as the 800MHz HTT limitation is pretty much a moot point, given that the performance difference is nonexistent. Being limited to 1.5Gb/s SATA is of course no limitation as even 15K RPM SCSI solutions aren't utilizing that kind of bandwidth let alone consumer SATA drives.
The BIOS options while not the best I've seen are certainly well above average. Extremely DIMM timing adjustment, that should be easily more then adequate for anyone.
CPU bus frequency can be adjusted in 1MHz increments up to 400MHz... though of course no board would ever have a prayer of actually hitting 400MHz bus but that's beside the point.
PCI/PCI-E buses are locked, and manually adjustable in 1MHz increments as well.
Clock multiplier is adjustable as one would expect. HTT multiplier is adjustable as well.
You have some limited ability to o/c the graphcs card core/mem clock, though frankly I'd just disable then and overclock the graphics card manually, as I'm not fond of motherboards bumping up the graphics card clockspeed by some indeterminate amount.
CPU voltage is adjustable from 1.1V to 1.75V, in .25V increments from 1.1V up to 1.55, and .5V increments thereafter which should be perfectly adequate unless your venturing into extreme cooling.
PCI-E bus voltage can be adjusted up to + 0.3V, HTT link voltage is also adjustable up to + 0.3V as well.
DDR voltage is adjustable up to + 0.2V... not as high as some extreme memory modules might like, but decent.
All considered the BIOS flexibility is quite good, and he board is completely stable even at very strenuous RAM timings with all banks filled. It performs as one would expect, I've had no performance issues with it.
The current BIOS does seem to have an intermittant issue with PS/2 keyboards not detecting properly, which I've seen mentioned on a few forums. Not as issue for me, as I use a USB keyboard but worth keeping in mind if your using a legacy PS/2 keyboard until a BIOS update fixes it.
The board overclockes extremely well, better then some high end NF3 boards would overclock.
I've had the board up to 286MHz HTT stable, I've yet to test it beyond that but even if that's the absolute limit which I'm inclined to doubt it should provide more then adequate room to heavily overclock any S939 A64.
The boards feature set is merely passable, but decent for it's intended market segment.
2X UDMA 133 ports/4X SATA ports. 3X IEEE 1394b ports, and up to 10 USB 2.0 ports. 1 CICADA8201 Gigabit Ethernet port. 3X PCI, 2X PCI-E 1X, and 1X PCI-E 16X ports. The onboard audio is pretty much average, using the Realtek ALC850 codec.
4 USB 2.0 ports provided on the backpanel, with an adapter provided to plug in to utilize more. You'll need to purchase a connector to utilize the IEEE 1394b ports however.
24pin PSU connector, but the board works fine with only a 20pin PSU as well.
How one prefers a motherboard to be laid out, is bound to differ from person to person but I'm not terrible enthusiastic about the motherboard layout myself.
linky
You can examine the layout on Gigabyte's site, so I won't comment to much on it here.
I do like the locations of the ATX +12V connector at the upper left corner just behind the backpanel PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector.
I've never been pleased with boards that position the main 24pin ATX connector right beside the FDD connector on the left side of the board as this one does though.
With some rather large capacitors right around the CPU socket, the board may not cope well with some overly large OEM HeatSinks, though you should have sufficient clearance for most.
The single system fan connector is located at the bottom right corner of the board, not my ideal location as I'd prefer it above the first PCI-E slot towards the middle of the board but others may feel differently.
The SATA/PATA ports are all placed exactly where I'd like them, no qualms there.
The extra USB connectors are all placed nicely, as are the IEEE 1394 connectors.
The clear CMS jumper is located beside the SATA connectors.
The case front panel connections are all clearly identified on the motherboard.
A longer PCI-E X16 graphics card will hang over the HSF covering the NF4 chipset without much clearance at all, so you'll be hard pressed to get a better HSF on it.
Thankfully the HSF used is decent, it seems to cool adequately and isn't particularly obtrusive at all with the case closed.
The HTT ratio set at 2X may not be well optimized for overclocking yet, as I'm only able to hit 280MHz bus with the HTT multiplier at 2X, whereas I've tested up to 3X at 286MHz bus.
The supposed limitation of 800MHz HTT doesn't seem to hurt much, without bumping up the HTT link voltag at all I can use the 4X multiplier up to a 254MHz bus speed which equates to 1016MHz HTT bus.
With the HTT Link voltage set to + .3V, I can use the 4X multipler up to 268MHz bus... a 1072MHz HTT bus speed, well in excess of the A2 revision NF4 chipset, and above that of the A3 revision used on NF4 Ultra/SLI boards.
Given the price point the board is selling at and the relatively limited alternatives I'm am quite pleased with it, and it seems like it should be a very solid option for those that don't mind the average feature set.