TMPGEnc DVD Encoding

    DVD has become one of the most popular mediums currently, and with more DVD recorders becoming available, more people are looking to put their home video's on DVD.  Does the nForce 2 motherboard offer any improvement in this area, and more specifically does dual channel memory make any difference?

    The times mentioned here are based on the actual CPU time used by the program, as the actual time was much higher and more random.  Unlike with DivX rendering there isn't as much of an improvement in rendering times, between a 5% and 6% increase in rendering speeds, compared to the SiS chipset.  Here though dual channel memory has no real impact, with less than 1% of difference seen between the motherboards. Overall not much of a difference but in rendering it can make a difference, in one other case, using a DVD video (Spiderman, the first 5 minutes) the nForce 2 allows the system to render slightly faster than the PIV 2.4GHz.

Conclusion

    So what can we conclude about this motherboard.  Let us examine the major points of this motherboard, the design and packaging, quality of included extras, and its performance.

    First the design of the motherboard.  Leadtek decided to go with the best performing Athlon motherboard at the current time, which is always a good idea.  They also didn't decide to cheapen the motherboard by using the MCP-T and not the MCP 'south bridge'.  This addition brought the 5.1 onboard Dolby Digital encoding/decoding to the system, and with the help of the Realtek ALC650 CODEC provided full 5.1 digital audio.  The use of the MCP-T also provides support for onboard Firewire (IEEE1394) which uses the ACR slot, and allows you attach your Digital camcorder to your computer.  The inclusion of only 4 PCI slots isn't as good as many other motherboards, but if one of your cards is a Firewire card, then it is slightly better.  

    The hard drive and floppy connectors are placed at the bottom, which could pose a problem for those with a full tower case with the floppy drive on top.  The AGP slot has a retention mechanism, which is getting to be a standard feature in motherboards today, and this helps hold the video card in, even when moving from LAN party to LAN party.  Right next to the AGP slot is the RAM slots, which happen to be placed in some of the best locations, as you can add and remove memory without having to remove your video card such as the Ti4600 series.  Lastly the CPU socket area, here we see one of the nicer points and rarer additions to Athlon motherboards today, that of the four socket mounting holes.  The area around the CPU socket leaves enough space for even the Alpha PAL-8045T heatsink to fit, though with any heatsink it is a tight fit with the ATX power connector.  The ATX power connector is placed in a awkward area, which means that it has to go over the heatsink to return to the power supply.

    The BIOS is nothing out of the ordinary, though the ability to raise the core voltage up to 2.0 v is a very nice addition.  You can also increase the AGP voltage by 0.2v which isn't much but when you consider that the AGP voltage is either 0.8v or 1.5v that translates into a 13-25% increase in voltage.  However many will not need that voltage increase as in the BIOS there is the option to lock your AGP/PCI speed which allows you to use any hardware

    How did this motherboard perform?  To be honest there isn't that much of a difference between nForce 2 motherboards in performance and as such the victories that the Leadtek motherboard has are really not as important as compared to the SiS 745 chipset, which is much slower.  However the slim margin of victory means that Leadtek has taken the time to get the 'most' out of its motherboard, though it isn't really that much more.  The network speed was fairly good, uploading faster than the other cards, but downloading from the test machine at a slower pace than all but the DLink 10/100 network card.  Audio wise the system held up very well, with good quality for both MP3's, music CD's and DVD's as well.  The sound quality is on par with many sound cards out there.

    This motherboard is among the lower price range of nForce 2 motherboards (), and is one of the few in that price range that has the MCP-T on it.  

Good Points

• MCP-T
• nForce 2 chipset
• Socket mounting holes
• Good Overclocking potential
• Firewire
• Price

Bad Points

• No multiplier options
• Overclocking isn't good on 133MHz FSB processors
• Only 4 PCI slots
• No RAID or bundle
• Awkward ATX power location
• Drive connector location

Final Words

    This motherboard is a good performer, and for a low price as well, and has some overclocking potential.  However the lack of the ability to change the multiplier and the poor overclocking with a 133MHz FSB processor push it just out of range of a recommended award, though if you want a inexpensive and good nForce 2 motherboard this should be at the top of your list.