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I have very fond memories of my first retail motherboard. Up until my BX-6119, all my computers were OEM PCs. I forgot why exactly I went nuts putting together this killer rig (at the time), but after a lot of research, I went with MSI. What a gem it was. Rock solid, and it survived 3 CPU upgrades until I decided it was time to retire it. In it's place was the MSI BX Master 6163. It was also a fantastic board, but somehow it didn't impress me as much as the 6119. That was the last MSI motherboard for awhile, as I went Asus and Abit for later upgrades. Although several manufacturers were producing motherboards with nVidia's latest, MSI was the first to market nVidia's superchip. MSI have been first before, but so far their track record has been spotty with their VIA initial launches. Will the K7N420 Pro follow the same fate?
 +  = 
nVidia shouldn't need any introduction. Without a doubt, the biggest and most popular video GPU developer and manufacturer, they were sitting on top of the world well before the nForce announcement. Why get into motherboards? I'd guess market diversity and eventual domination. Who knows. As long as the products don't suck, do whatever you want. I'll get more into the nForce later on in the review.
Special Features
Live BIOS" (* K7N420 Pro can support only up to BIOS Ver 2.10 )
Live Driver"
D-Bracket" (Optional)
Special Options
Chipset integrated10/100 Base-T Ethernet/Fast Ethernet (Optional)
Audio CNR 6 channel card (Optional)
TV-out daughter card (Optional)
CPU
Supports Socket A (Socket 462) for AMD® Athlon" / Athlon" XP / Duron" processors up to 1800+MHz
Chipset
nVIDIA® nForce 420D Chipset
- IGP-128 (Integrated Graphics Processor)
- Support 200/266MHz FSB
- Twinbank Memory Architecture/128-bit DDR memory controller
- Integrated GeForceMX-class advanced Graphics Processing Unit
- AGP 4x support
- Hyper Transport interface to MCP (800MB/sec max.)
nVIDIA® MCP-D Chipset
- Dual ATA/100 controller
- Support USB UHCI 1.0a, provide up to six USB ports
- IEEE 802.3 compatible MAC (MII)
- Integrated Audio Processor Unit, AC'97 2.1 compliant
- SPDIF output function -- Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder FSB 100/133(200/266)MHz clocks are supported.
Main Memory
Support up to three DDR DIMMs
-- Maximum memory size up to 1.5GB
-- Support 128-bit system memory Slots
Slots
- Support AGP 2.0 2x/4x (1.5V only), One CNR slot, Five PCI slots
- 32-bit Master PCI 2.2 compliant
- Support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface
On-Board IDE
-- An IDE controller on the MCP chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 100 operation modes
-- Support up to four IDE devices connection
APU (audio processing unit) integrated in MCP
-- Support up to 256 hardware-processed voices or 64 hardware voice in 3D; support multi-speaker 3D audio.
6 speaker Surround sound can be achieved by 2 means:
1. Digital thru a SPDIF speaker (e.g. Creative DTT3500)
2. Analog thru a CNR sound card (motherboard 2channel + CNR 4channel)
CNR card is not included. It is optional *Yay!*
Video
-- 256-bit 2D/3D graphics accelerator
-- Supports the 2nd generation T&L engine, nVIDIA Shading Rasterizer
-- Supports TV-out daughter card (optional)
On-Board Peripherals
On-Board Peripherals include:
-- One floppy port that supports two FDD with 360KB, 720KB, 1.44MB and 2.88MB
-- Two serial ports COM A+COM 2 (pin header)
-- One parallel port that supports SPP/EPP/ECP modes
-- One VGA connector
-- Six USB ports (2 x rear connectors and 2 x USB front pin header to support four ports)
-- One IrDA connector
-- One Audio/Game port
-- One D-Bracket pin header
BIOS
-- The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS that can detect the periph-eral devices and expansion cards installed on the board automatically
-- Support Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function that can record
your mainboard specifications
Dimension
30.5 cm(L) x 22.5 cm(W) ATX Form Factor
Mounting
6 mounting holes.
Whew! Now that we've dispensed with the obligatory specifications, let's look into the stuff that really matters...
NVIDIA nForce Platform Processing Architecture
 
nForce SPP/IGP (left), and nForce MCP (right)
So, what is the nForce? Up until now, any motherboard with integrated video and audio generally sucked ass. Ok, it wasn't "generally", but more like "always". With the nForce, nVidia hopes to break into the popular low cost OEM market, as well as the performance market (huh? Both?) and offer a solution unlike any other. An integrated solution, making OEM and system builders happy, plus extremely impressive performance, satisfying the needs of power users. How is this accomplished?
nForce SPP/IGP
There are four main features of the nForce System Platform Processor (SPP) and Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP). Probably the most talked about feature is the integrated nVidia GeForce 2 MX graphics core. Basically, it's a GeForce 2 MX, and performs pretty much like it should, not great, but not too shabby either.
Next on the list is the TwinBank Memory Architecture, supporting dual-channel access, which in theory should allow for faster and more efficient memory performance. The SPP/IGP controller allows for two independent 128-bit data transfer channels (This is the IGP-128. The IGP-64 is similar to everyone else). This is important because with memory intense applications, your system bus takes a severe beating with various requests to the memory, since most manufacturers shove all this down the same path. nVidia increases the bandwidth by doubling the number by two. This sounds great in theory, but since it'll mostly be gamers looking at this motherboard, this double-the-bandwidth doesn't really work, yet. Perhaps in the future, other games or devices will make use of it, but not so much now.
The nVidia Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-processor (DASP) is another feature that is supposed to enhance the performance of the CPU. The DASP watches the CPU and predetermines the requests that the CPU may make with the memory. Much like how cache works with your memory, the DASP works much the same way, where if it predicts correctly, the CPU will never have to go to the memory for information, thus speeding things up. I'm not exactly sure of their claims of more stability, but I suppose you can see it as VIA and their KT266/266A revisions which is pretty much the same idea in terms of stability.
Finally, the SPP/IGP incorporates AMD's Hypertransport technology, a faster I/O interface than previously offered. PCI only has a 133MB/sec, as opposed to 800MB/sec for Hypertransport.
nForce MCP
The nForce Media and Communications Processor (MCP) has three features worth mentioning. Like the IGP, the MCP potentially can free you up an expansion port, or two. Integrated audio (APU) is included, and it boasts quality 3D sound and a Dolby 5.1 Digital encoder. A complete suite of communications devices are supported, but in reality, this will vary depending on the manufacturer. Likely, any nForce board you'll buy will simply have built-in ethernet. Finally, we have StreamThru, which is a technology designed to optimize data communications.
Does any of these things sound familiar? I recall Microsoft making something that has the same things ;)
So, what does all this mean to me?
The obvious benefit for the majority of the OEM market is that we potentially have (I say potentially, cause I've seen good chipsets marred by poor motherboards) a quality integrated motherboard. Consider that the market price of a quality motherboard will run you about 120$, and adding a good budget 3D video card, sound card and a network card may add another 140$. Averaging around 170$ - 200$, the nForce may be suitable for those of you on a budget. Just add a CPU, ram, some drives and shove it into a case, and you're all set. That's what my cousin did, and he now has a speedy system that cost him less than 600$ (take THAT eMachine!). Sure, it doesn't pull down 200fps in Quake 3, but he plays 2D strategy games anyhow.
But, keep in mind that even with the integrated parts, they can all be disabled for add-in cards. I dropped a GeForce 3 in for testing, and it worked fine. So why would an enthusiast want an nForce. As you'll see later, nVidia also designed the nForce to be a performer.
Next Page - The Board
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