Final thoughts
Gigabyte's been quick off the mark in releasing retail motherboards based on NVIDIA's nForce 400 chipset. Out of a possible choice of four combinations, the K8N51GMF-9 amalgamates nForce 430 to the basic GeForce 6100 IGP, with the end result a motherboard that has a strong southbridge and basic IGP. Gigabyte makes the most of the nForce 430 by specifying high-definition audio as opposed to plain old AC'97. Gigabit Ethernet and 4 SATA2 ports make the full use of what's available, and Gigabyte then adds a discrete FireWire ASIC to make the K8N51GMF-9 a well-featured motherboard at the ~£50 asking price. Considering the microATX-sized board and number of features and ports that need to be integrated, the layout can be considered adequate.As you know, onboard video is taken care of by the GeForce 6100 IGP. By its very design, it's not capable of rendering modern games at acceptable framerates when set to resolutions above 800x600, even with Shader Model 3.0 support, and it also misses out some of the 2D-related features (HD playback, for example) inherent in the '6150. General benchmark performance is a little below that of Foxconn's competing nForce 430/GeForce 6150 C51GK8MA motherboard. We expected it to be comparatively slower in onboard 3D evaluation, but Gigabyte's implementation doesn't quite match the memory bandwidth and latency scores posted by Foxconn's board.
So what you get for £52 is a solid board with very few surprises that's good for a multitude of uses. Voltage manipulation in BIOS, better subsystem performance, and, perhaps, a sweeter bundle would garner the Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 an instant recommendation in the budget sector. As it is, it's decent but not outstanding, although you could do a lot worse than the K8N51GMF-9 if your budget stretches to only £50 or so and you require a S939 motherboard with onboard video and decent storage potential. We can forsee a gaggle of low-priced PCs with various nForce4 400-series chipsets as a base. Keep your eyes peeled as we take a look at examples from other manufacturers in due course.
