Verdict: The cheapest way to get SLI on your Pentium 4 or Pentium D

Most Gigabyte motherboards are guilty of having far too many USB 2 ports, RAID controllers and separate VRM daughterboards, with the end result that these models cost a small fortune. Fortunately, though, the company also makes some much more sensibly priced motherboards.

The GA-8N-SLI is one of those more value-orientated motherboards and is based around the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset, so you can use two graphics cards in SLI with your Pentium 4 or Pentium D. Unlike the competing designs from Abit and MSI, the GA-8N-SLI doesn't have any fancy extras, such as an error code display or Sound Blaster audio, but this helps to bring its price down to a very competitive £68.

That said, the GA-8N-SLI isn't stripped to the bone, as it has four RAID-capable S-ATA II ports, two RAID-capable EIDE channels, two 8x PCI-E, two 1x PCI-E and two PCI slots. There are also ten USB 2 ports, 8-channel AC97 audio courtesy of a Realtek ALC850 chip and a Gigabit LAN port.

The BIOS of the GA-8N-SLI allows you to increase the CPU voltage to 1.6V, the RAM by 0.7V and the chipset by 0.3V. However, despite this, the GA-8N-SLI still isn't a good overclocker, peaking at a maximum stable FSB of 210MHz, which merely raised the CPU frequency from 3GHz to 3.15GHz. In contrast, the Abit ran stably at 215MHz, while the MSI remained stable at 225MHz. This just goes to show that lots of BIOS options and large voltage adjustments don't guarantee big overclocks. If the DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert were a cheetah then the GA-8N-SLI would be a tortoise.

The nForce4 SLI Intel Edition clearly isn't the best chipset to choose if you want to heavily overclock your Pentium 4 or Pentium D. What the GA-8N-SLI does have going for it is an incredibly low price - even lower than a Socket 939 nForce4 SLI motherboard. The money you save buying the Gigabyte could therefore be put to better use by buying a high-quality PCI sound card or perhaps a second graphics card.

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