Only two more days until AMD's AM2 launch
AMD is poised to announce the AM2 platform on Tuesday, but
motherboard manufacturers are already gearing up for the launch. We were
able to get a sneak peak at another high end nForce 570 motherboard expected to
ship on Tuesday, the Universal Abit KN9 SLI. nForce 570 is NVIDIA's step
down chipset from nForce
590, but still features dual PEG adaptor lanes that will automatically
reconfigure to dual x8 configurations if two video cards are placed in the
slots.
The KN9 SLI uses NVIDIA's nForce 570 and both onboard dual Gigabit LAN
PHYs. Audio is provided by the Realtek ALC883 codec, which provides
7.1 channel playback. The motherboard also features an optical audio
output. The board also features two PCIe x1 adaptors and two PCI
adaptors.
The board also supports six SATA 3.0Gbps interfaces, two Firewire-400 headers
(neither of which are available via the I/O interface), a single floppy drive
interface, ten USB 2.0 channels (four from the back I/O interface) and a single
UDMA adaptor. We were a little surprised to see Abit, the pioneers of
legacy-free motherboards, adopt a floppy interface.
Like most high end motherboards based on nForce components, the KN9 SLI
features a heatpipe design that does not require active cooling over the
MCP. The board is also unique in the fact that Universal Abit designed
the PEG adaptors slightly further apart than normal, which should allow for
slightly better thermals and water-cooling blocks. No price has been set
for the KN9 SLI, though distributors have estimated the board will retail for
about $150 at launch.
Universal Abit's webpage has some images of the motherboard available, though a
few specifications have changed since the company announced
the motherboard earlier this month.
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