Unfortunately, the Albatron K8SLI motherboard missed the ?SLI Motherboard Roundup?that was posted online here last month. The roundup included AMD nForce4 SLI motherboards from ASUS, EPoX, DFI and Gigabyte. The competition was very stiff with most boards offering similar performance and features. However, boards such as the Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI stood out as being feature rich solutions where as the DFI LANPartyUT NF4 SLI-DR was an overclocking weapon. So far each and every SLI motherboard has had its own unique features and abilities. It will be interesting to see where the Albatron K8SLI fits in.
This new technology called SLI (Scalable Link Interface), allows a single system to combine two NVIDIA graphics cards to scale system performance. This technology takes advantage of the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express bus. Currently the ability to operate the GeForce 6600 GT, 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra in SLI mode is possible. While this technology has the power to almost double the frame rates when operating in SLI mode, you have to remember it will also cost twice as much to use. For example a GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI setup will cost around $1000 US for the graphics cards alone. This technology is however great value for GeForce 6600 GT setups, as it will cost no more than $400 US for the graphics cards.
These new SLI motherboards have no doubt become hugely popular for a number of reasons. First of all they bring PCI Express support to the AMD64 platform and furthermore they offer a flexible upgrade path. Although initially these SLI enabled motherboards will carry a fair price premium, their unique abilities are worth this price penalty. In order to utilize SLI technology there is currently only one chipset that will give a motherboard this support. Known as the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI, this chipset supports a whole host of new and exciting features. The nForce4 series looks to be the best NVIDIA chipset creation yet.
The Albatron K8SLI looks to be retailing for roughly $160 US, making it one of the more affordable nForce4 SLI motherboards. The EPoX 9NPA+ SLI shares the same price bracket and surprisingly so does the feature rich Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI. Feature wise the K8SLI looks to be quite weak as it is the only nForce4 SLI board I have reviewed thus far that does not feature Firewire and 8-Channel Audio. Furthermore it is one of the few to boast just a single Gigabit LAN controller and just four SATA ports. However, although the Albatron K8SLI may be skimpy on features, it does have a few ace's up its sleeve.
Albatron's ATOP Breathes New Life into AGP-8x Graphics Cards (2005-05-17)