Biostar N4SIE-A7 bolts Intel, SLI together

AT AROUND US$160, Biostar's N4SIE-A7 is currently the cheapest Intel CPU SLI mainboard on the market. It is based around the recently-released Intel CPU version of Nvidia's nForce 4 chipset. Despite the low price, this mainboard doesn't seem to lacking features, and even has Firewire and eight channel sound built in.

Full specifications are available on Biostar's site, but here's a list of key features. The ATX format board is based around the Nvidia nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset and supports Intel LGA 775 socket CPUs - see the next paragraph for information on dual core CPU support.

There are four DDR2 memory slots, two PCI Express x16 slots, two PCI Express x1 slots, three PCI slots, a Gigabit LAN connector, one Firewire socket, and four back panel USB 2 sockets. There was an additional header for a second firewire socket on the mainboard I tested, but this is described as 'optional' in the product manual, so may not appear on all retail versions. There are also 3 internal headers which can support up to 6 more USB 2 sockets, if your case has them. The 8 channel sound is provided by the remarkably tiny RealTek ALC850 chip.

There are four serial ATA and two IDE sockets for up to eight disk drives. According to Biostar, RAID 0 and RAID 1 are supported on both SATA and IDE channels - I didn't test this feature. In addition, this chipset should also support RAID 5. Biostar doesn't bother to mention this, presumably because Nvidia's new nForce RAID 5 feature has a disappointingly slow write speed. This problem applies to all mainboards with this chipset, by the way, not just Biostar's.

Biostar developed this board so quickly that early versions did not support Pentium D dual core CPUs (because information on these new CPUs was limited, manufacturers had difficulties implementing support on the Nforce 4 chipset). So if you are planning to use a dual core CPU, make sure you buy the 1.1 revision of the board - this apparently is not something that can be fixed with a BIOS update. On the review sample Biostar lent me, the board's version number is clearly marked as 'ver 1.0' next to the product name in the middle of the board. It is also on the box label.

Early adopters should also note that the original version of the BIOS enforced the display of a full screen Biostar logo at startup. So download the BIOS upgrade from Biostar's website if you have an early model and want to see what's going on when you start the system.

SLI users will be pleased to see that the 2 PCI Express x16 slots are a fair distance apart (the two PCI Express x1 slots lie in between them). The distance between the centres of the actual slots is about 62 mm. This allows plenty of room to fit a pair of double-width graphics cards, and space for good airflow around them. For SLI support, the board requires a standard 4 pin power cable plugged into the motherboard to provide extra power on the PCI Express bus. Unlike some other SLI boards, the N4SIE has a selector card which you need to take out and reverse to enable SLI.

Overclocking options are excellent as far as control of timing and frequencies goes, but merely adequate in the voltage control department. You can adjust the DDR voltage (from 1.85V to 2.15V) and the CPU voltage (up to +.15V in .05V steps), and that's it - no fiddling with chipset or bus voltages. Performance in synthetic benchmarks like SiSoft Sandra is near identical to results reported for nForce 4 Intel edition boards from other manufacturers.

The instruction manual is pretty thin, at 31 pages in the English version, and includes the padding which is a traditional feature of mainboard instruction manuals - who really needs detailed pinouts for the ATX power connector, for example? There's no explanation of the many esoteric settings in the BIOS, some of which appear to be specific to this new chipset. The manual's explanation of how to set up two graphics cards in SLI mode is quite clear and comprehensive, however. This is sensible, as few N4SIE buyers will have used SLI before. The stipulation that you need at least a 500 watt power supply for SLI is a bit misleading, though, as this is actually the maximum you're likely to need for any of the current generation of SLI-capable cards.

Major online retailers in the US are currently asking from $159 to $169 for this board. Obviously, prices and availability in other areas may vary. µ