AM2 MBO Round-up: Part II
Author: Josip Brombauer
Date: 07 Dec 2006

We're continuing the AM2 round-up with two more boards, both featuring the popular nForce 570 SLI chipset. One of those is an ASUS product, and the other is made by Abit. That brings the current total of reviewed boards to four, which gives a bit more room for analysis. So without further ado, let?s dive in?

Abit KN9 SLI

The KN9 SLI is a mainstream enthusiast board based on the nForce 570 SLI chipset. If you?ll recall, the 570 SLI differs from the high-end 590 SLI by being a one chip (MCP only) solution with a total of 28 PCI-E lanes, as opposed to the 46 lanes present on 590 SLI. That means that although there are two x16 slots on the board for a SLI configuration, only 8 lanes are available for each of those slots. This has not been a major problem up until now, performance of SLI setups using electrical x8 slots has been marginally lower than with full-blown x16 slots, but with Direct X 10 parts such as GeForce 8800 GTX available for purchase we might begin to see an increased need for bandwidth that x8 simply will not be able to satisfy. The other difference here is the lack of LinkBoost and SLI-ready Memory support. Apart from that, the chipset is the same as the 590 SLI.
The board itself has an orange PCB with a very clean layout of components. The Abit Silent OTES aluminium heatsinks with an integrated heatpipe takes care of the heat emanating from the chipset. We?ve found a 24-pin power connector, one 4-pin 12V connector and an additional molex connector on the board. In addition to the two PCI-E x16 slots, there are two x1 slots and two more PCI slots on the board. You will be able to connect up to six SATA 3G devices, and two more PATA ones. Four USB ports on the back panel, along with two gigabit LAN ports, six analog jacks for the Realtek ALC883 HD audio codec, an optical S/PDIF and two PS/2 ports complete the list. FireWire and two more USB ports are supplied on a bracket.
The BIOS is a standard Phoenix Award issue with Abit?s SoftMenu. It will be more than adequate for your overclocking needs, although it is not nearly as extreme as those found on the 590 SLI boards. We have found, however, that using the 1T memory timing results in an unstable system, so testing was conducted using the 2T setting.