Foxconn WinFast NF4SK8AA SLI Mainboard 

Manufactured by: Foxconn
Supplied by: Foxconn
Estimated Price: $130.00

by Dean Barker (9/09/2005)

Introduction

For me, I enjoy looking at components that are practical upgrades not only in features but cost.  Sure, I’d love to go buy a new Athlon 64 FX 57 or an Intel 3.73GHz Extreme Edition processor but a thousand dollar processor upgrade simply isn’t within my means.  Mainboards are the same thing; I’d love to pick up a $250 SLI board with every conceivable bell, whistle, onboard cooling and UV effect there is, but the practical side of me usually wins out.  I’d rather spend half as much sacrificing the fluff without taking a hit on performance.  Today, thanks to the good people at Foxconn we have the WinFast NF4SK8AA mainboard on deck.  This board sports SLI, up to ten USB connections, Dual Gigabit LAN, 7.1 high definition audio, orange PCB and a very smart layout for $130.  I’m sure with that, we have your full attention.  Let’s take a closer look at the new Foxconn SLI board as well as put it through its paces.  Let’s start things out with a look at the specifications.

Specifications:

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

• Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 (CK8-04) SLI

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

• Expansion slots: 2 x PCI Express x16, 1 x PCI Express x1, 3 x PCI

• Audio: Integrated, 7.1 channel AC97 (Realtek)

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

• USB: Up to 10; 4 in rear I/O area + 3 internal 2-port headers; ver. 2.0

• IDE/SATA: 2 x ATA/133 + 4 x SATA/300 (w/ cross-controller RAID 0, 1, and 0+1) + 2 x SATA/300 (w/ RAID 0, 1)

• Firewire: 2 internal IEEE-1394 headers

• Rear I/O: 1 x PS/2 keyboard; 1 x PS/2 mouse; 2 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); Additional line-outs for 7.1 channel audio; 2 x S/PDIF (1 x coax out + 1 x optical out)
  1 x S/PDIF (coax out)

• Internal Connections: 1 x floppy disk drive; Front audio header; 3 x USB 2-port headers, ver. 2.0; 2 x IEEE-1394 header

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

• ATX Form Factor (293 x 198mm)

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - Features / The Board
Pg 3 - A Closer Look at the Board
Pg 4 - BIOS
Pg 5 - Test Setup / Productivity Benchmarks
Pg 6 - Gaming Benchmarks / SLI
Pg 7 - Overclocking / Conclusion