BFG VNF4 Ultra Motherboard Review :

BFG VNF4 Ultra Motherboard Review

Manufacturer:	BFG
Title:	BFG VNF4 Ultra Motherboard Review
Availability:	Immediately
Author:
Date:	03-10-2005
Price:	$160.00

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There are 6 parts to this review, please use the pulldown below to browse sections or simply hit "Next" at the bottom of each section to continue

Introduction

BFG Technologies is best known for their Nvidia video cards. They are one of the leading makers of gForce cards. They have recently released their first motherboard offering, the BFG nForce 4 Ultra (VNF4). I had an opportunity to test this board out. In the following paragraphs I will be introducing you to all the features of this new motherboard.

Features and Specifications

Here is the list of all the features of the board as supplied by BFG.

Form Factor

ATX (305mm x 220mm)

CPU

Supports AMD Socket-939 Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 processor
Processor interface via 2000MT/s HyperTransport bus

Chipset

NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra

Main Memory

Four 184-pin DDR DIMMs up to 4GB
Supports Dual Channel DDR266/333/400 memory

Expansion Slots

PCI Express x16 port for PCI Express graphics card
Two PCI Express x1 ports
Three 32-bit PCI slots (v2.3 compliant)

Audio Subsystem

Supports enhanced NVIDIA 7.1-channel audio
Complies with AC'97 Rev 2.3 specifications
Supports 48KHz coaxial S/PDIF output
EAX/Direct Sound 3D/I3DL2/A3D compatible

SATA

Supports four native SATA2 3.0Gb/s devices
Hot-swap capability, allowing disks to be changed without powering down the system
Optimized for the high-performance NVIDIA RAID technology
Supports SATA ATAPI devices

Ultra DMA IDE Ports

Supports 2 UltraDMA-66/100/133 IDE ports

FDD

One FDD connector supports up to 2.88MB

USB2.0

Supports total 10 USB2.0 ports with High-Speed Device @ 480Mb/s Transfer Rates

Embedded system monitoring

Temperature sensing for CPU and system
Fan speed monitoring and control for CPU and system

Boot-Block Flash ROM

Award system BIOS supports PnP, APM, DMI, ACPI, & Multi-device booting features

Other Features Rear panel I/O ports

PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard port
25-pin D-Sub female Parallel port
Two 9-pin D-Sub male Serial ports
Four USB ports and one RJ45 connector
6-port Audio Jack for 7.1-Channel and S/PDIF output

Internal I/O connectors

Four 3x1 pin fan connectors
Three 5x2 pin USB connectors for additional 6 USB ports
3x1 pin wake on LAN connector with housing
3x1 pin wake on Modem connector with housing
Two 4x1 pin CD-in connectors with 2.54mm pitch housing
5x2 pin Front Audio connector
9x2 pin Front Panel connector
24 pin ATX Power connector
4 pin ATX 12V Power connector

This motherboard uses the Nvidia nForce 4 Ultra chipset. The nForce 4 Ultra chipset is almost identical to the nForce 4 SLI chipset; the only difference is the Ultra doesn't support SLI.