Foxconn WinFast 6150K8MA Mainboard 

Manufactured by: Foxconn
Supplied by: Foxconn
Street Price: $79.00

by Dean Barker (1/22/2006)

Introduction

Integrated video on an Athlon 64 board has been a rare thing until NVidia turned up the heat with their GeForce 6100/6150 + nForce4 410/430 MCP chipset pairing.  The market for onboard video is much bigger than it once was.  This being largely due to folks wanting mainboards for HTPC setups not to mention silent, simple and inexpensive rigs.  Add in the small form factor piece and you have more than just a market niche.  Foxconn obviously sensed this and has released a micro ATX mainboard based on the GeForce 6100/6150 + nForce4 410/430 MCP chipset styled the Foxconn 6150K8MA.  Today, thanks to the good people at Foxconn, we're going to take a closer look at this micro ATX integrated mainboard and how well it steps up to the plate. 

Before we get started, it occurred to me that a few words about Foxconn's history may be in order.  Foxconn has been in business since 1974, growing slowing into its position today as one of the leading OEM component producers in the world.  Foxconn has been giving more attention and subsequently strengthening their position in the aftermarket arena over the past few years.  With production facilities throughout China, Europe and the United States, Foxconn is a dominate force in the component industry and looks to continue that growth though performance and value.  Let's have a look at the white paper on their newest micro ATX product, the Foxconn 6150K8MA.

Specifications:

• Application: AMD Athlon™ 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, Socket 939 (939-pin), 1600/2000MT/s

• Chipset: NVidia GeForce 6150 GPU / nForce4 430 MCP

• Memory: Dual channel, unbuffered, 2.5V DDR266/333/400, (4) 184-pin DIMM sockets, max 4GB

• Expansion slots: 1 x PCI Express x16, 3 x PCI

• Audio: Integrated, 7.1 channel AC97 (Realtek)

• LAN: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) controller (Marvell)

• USB: Up to 8; 4 in rear I/O area + 2 internal 2-port headers; ver. 2.0

• IDE/SATA: 2 x ATA/133 + 4 x SATA/300 (supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5)

• Firewire: Rear I/O 6-pin, internal IEEE-1394 header

• Rear I/O: 1 x PS/2 keyboard; 1 x PS/2 mouse; 1 x RJ45 (LAN); 4 x USB 2.0; 1 x line-in/line-out/mic (audio); 1 x parallel (SPP/ECP/EPP); 1 x COM (16550-compatible UART); 1 x Integrated VGA out; Additional line-outs for 7.1 channel audio; 1 x IEEE1394; S-Video out

• Internal Connections: 1 x floppy disk drive; Front audio header; 2 x USB 2-port headers, ver. 2.0

• BIOS: 4Mb flash EEPROM w/ LAN boot, PnP, ACPI, WfM, DMI 2.0

• Micro ATX Form Factor (242 x 242mm)

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - What you get and the board
Pg 3 - More of the board
Pg 4 - BIOS
Pg 5 - Testing setup and PC Magazine benchmarks
Pg 6 - Super Pi and SiSoft Sandra 2005 Pro
Pg 7 - Half Life 2, Quake 4, Far Cry benchmarks
Pg 8 - Overclocking and Conclusion