Product Reviews

Because we have reviewed graphics cards in our Labs (page 177), we thought it would be a good idea to bring you some components that you can use with them. The obvious accessory is an SLI motherboard. ECS's AMD Socket 939 KN1 SLI Extreme is the SLI version of the KN1.

The main difference is the inclusion of the second PCI-E x16 slot. The chipset automatically detects when a second graphics card is installed, so you can add a second nVidia graphics card at any point. However, using the motherboard in this mode means that you block access to the PCI-E x1 slot, although you're left with three PCI slots for expansion.

The motherboard is also generously populated

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with storage connectors, with three ATA-133 and six SATA ports. This gives you plenty of room for storage and you can even use RAID to increase performance or reliability. Finally, with two Gigabit Ethernet ports, you can connect to multiple networks or share an internet connection.

ECS supplies the KN1 Extreme SLI with its Top Hat Flash. This is an additional BIOS that clips on top, so you can restore settings after overclocking or if your original BIOS becomes corrupted. Another good feature is the small cooling fan and vent mounted on the rear panel, which helps draw hot air away from your processor.

Installation is pretty easy as ECS has an automatic installation utility, which detects and installs all the Windows drivers you'll need. It takes just a few minutes to get going and we had no problems.

We tested the motherboard using an AMD Athlon 3500+ processor and recorded scores of 127 in Shopper's application benchmarks and 4,337 in PCMark04. These compare favourably to the scores we got from the standard non-SLI KN1 Extreme motherboard.

While the original board remains excellent value for anyone not interested in 3D graphics, the KN1 SLI Extreme is a brilliant example of an SLI board and very good value, too.