Nvidia nForce3 Ultra Motherboard Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Gigabyte GA-K8NS-939 (The Bad)

There isn't much to complain with regards to the design of the GA-K8NS-939. One of the issues the board suffered from was the DIMM slot design. Similar to the EpoX board, all four slots were positioned next to each other without breathing space. The compacted layout made it difficult to install some of the more exotic memory and inhibited proper airflow.

The GA-K8NS-939 also suffers from DIMM slots that are too close for comfort.

The main problem we have with the board was the lack of audio ports. Although the board made use of an 8-channel CODEC, it did the Realtek ALC850 a disservice by only providing stereo output. Of course, the Mic and Line-In jacks support jack sensing to enable 6-channel speaker implementations. However, using this option meant losing the original functions of the two ports and even then, they still do not provide the full eight channels that the board supports. There were also no S/PDIF output available and Gigabyte did not provide any expansion brackets in this aspect as well.

The Gigabyte GA-K8NS-939 also uses the same Realtek ALC850 8-channel CODEC to power its onboard audio capabilities.

The GA-K8NS-939 shortchanges users on audio capabilities since you will be unable to utilize its 8-channel CODEC with just stereo output. S/PDIF and expansion brackets are not provided too.

Since the GA-K8NS-939 is a mainstream model, it doesn't feature Gigabyte's DualBIOS feature.



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