So when AMD unveiled their AMD64 platform of processors to the market, you whipped out the ‘old credit card and had all that lovely new hardware shipped overnight right? Well, if you're like 99% of the rest of the population, then your answer to that question was probably “no”. That's not to say that it's a bad thing, after all, having all the newest toys means you to get to experience first hand the newest bumps in the road as the technology matures. Enthusiasts will attest to the fact that the first series of AMD64 capable chipsets, such as the NVIDIA nForce3-150, left a little bit to be desired. Compared to the only other chipset option at the time, VIA's K8T800, NVIDIA's solution only offered a 600MHz HyperTransport interface (VIA offered the full 800MHz AMD standard speeds) and a less-than-stellar overclocking environment. The overclocking issues were primarily due to the inability to properly lock down the AGP and PCI bus frequencies, meaning that as the CPU's FSB was increased, the AGP and PCI buses came along for the ride. Most PCI hardware doesn't care for much, if any, of an increase in bus speed and typically goes south faster that you can say “Do I smell smoke?” While NVIDIA assured that the chipset was capable of latching down these buses, no manufacturer ever seemed capable of releasing a BIOS update that truly resolved the issue.

Now that the platform has had a little bit of time to mature, more folks have begun to put some thought towards upgrading to a 64-bit capable environment. With the introduction of newer, improved chipsets such as the nForce3-250 from NVIDIA, the 64-bit lifestyle is slowly inching away from being an enthusiast only market to something a bit more broad and common-place; heck, your parent's next PC just might be based on one. The most interesting part about the nForce3-250 chipset is that there will be 4 different variations: the plain 250, 250Gb, 250Gb Ultra, and the 250Gb Ultra PRO; each offering different options and functionalities for an array of AMD64 systems. For today's review, we will be looking at the Gigabyte K8NSNXP motherboard, which is based around the base nForce3-250 chipset.

Gigabyte, founded in 1986, has gained quite a notoriety of building extremely solid motherboards. When it comes to Gigabyte's flagship models, as the K8NSNXP is, the sky has always been the limit when it comes to all the extra features bundled onboard and inside. Several common features that you'll find standard on these flagship models include their trademarked DPS system (DPSK8 as it's called on Athlon64 systems) as well as TI's newest TSB82AA2 IEEE1394b controller chip. The DPSK8 system introduces a 6-phase power regulation setup for better CPU stability and TI's new controller provides you with three ports supporting the new Firewire 800 ( 1394b ) standard, allowing for 800Mb/s throughputs from supporting devices.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg of extras that we'll discuss as we look at this motherboard and see how well it performs and if it continues in the trend of quality products that we're used to seeing from Gigabyte. Read on and we'll see just what this board offers you, the potential buyer.