DFI and the nForce 4 chipset have most the basics covered here including the standard four SATA ports along with two IDE channels. One of the nice things about the nForce 3 and 4 chipsets is the ability to span RAID partitions across both PATA and SATA. DFI has implemented a dual Gigabit ethernet connection, one provided through the nForce 4 MCP and the second with the ubiquitous Marvell chip. The nForce 4 LAN connection is more feature complete as it includes NVIDIA's ActiveArmor and second generation firewall. Things get interesting quickly however as we pore through the rest of the feature set.

Audio is provided through what DFI calls the Karajan audio module - when the motherboard is unwrapped the back panel looks a bit bare, there are the standard PS/2 ports, SPDIF in and out, dual Gbe, a single 6 pin firewire connection, and 6 USB2 ports. Conspicuously absent are the audio jacks. The Karajan audio module provides 8 channel audio courtesy of the ALC850 codec through six audio jacks. Instead of having the ALC850 chip on the actual motherboard PCB, it is moved onto the Karajan module, presumably to reduce the effects of noise from other motherboard components.

The Karajan audio module powered by an ALC850 chip

The second big surprise is the presence of the second PCIe x16 slot - remember this is an Ultra chipset that we are looking at today, not a SLI. DFI has something that they are touting called Dual Xpress Graphics (DXG), which simply allows the addition of a second video card for an additional two displays for desktop output. Unfortunately, the official line is that it will not support SLI as there is no SLI bridge piece included with the board. By default, the lane configuration is set to x16/x2 for x16 slots but the infamous pencil trick will change it to a x8/x8 configuration. There is talk that NVIDIA will be cracking down on modded Ultra chips so buying an Ultra board in hopes of modding it to a SLI board are hampered by what NVIDIA can do on the driver side and the ability of end users to get a hold of the SLI bridge piece.

DFI is not done with their bag of PCIe tricks yet however. Astute readers would have noticed that there is a x4 and a x1 slot in addition to the two x16 slots. The nForce 4 supports a maximum of 20 PCIe lanes so the math does not quite work out. This will get confusing fast, so bear with me a minute. As mentioned previously, one of the x16 slots actually has only x2 lanes as far as bandwidth goes. The x4 slot is allocated x1 worth of bandwidth and the x1, x1. This adds up to exactly twenty, the maximum supported by the nForce 4. However, through a set of jumpers this can be reconfigured. We noted previously the mod trick will change the lane configuration of the two x16 slots to x8 each. The jumper can also change give the x4 slot full x4 bandwidth. A table is conveniently silkscreened onto the motherboard. Officially only the nForce 4 SLI board supports reconfigurable PCIe lanes but the sneaky engineers over at DFI seem to have put in some OT to give us end users something that is pretty neat. Big thumbs up from us for further future proofing technology.

PCIe Lane settings are silkscreened on the board