AM2NF4G-VSTA is ASRock's first low entry level board based on the new NF6100-405 chipset. This new chipset is a single integrated video chipset that comes with a DX9 video PS3.0 that can be configured up to 256MB of shared memory. It is also equipped with a PCIe x8 VGA slot so that you could use it with an external PCIe based VGA card.

Just like the other AM2 boards reviewed before, this board supports dual channel DDRII-800/667/533 with 4 DIMM slots with a max capacity of 8GB. This mainboard also boost a new patented technology to boost memory performance up to 12.5%. The board also supports 2 SATA II 3.0Gb/s supporting RAID 0,1, JBOD, NCQ and hot plug functions. There is Fast ethernet, a 7.1 ch VISTA premium level HD Audio using the ALC888 audio codec. There is 1 PCIe x8 for external VGA card. The board is Windows^® Vista™ Permium Logo Hardware Ready.

In terms of performance, this board is slightly slower compared to its VIA based solutions. Although there is a new feature known as AM2 boost, we found that it merely o/c the CPUCLK to 203MHz thereby compensating for the drop in memory performance due to AM2's spec of multiplier ratio vs bandwidth. Although it did push the benchmark numbers a bit higher but it didn't do as much as in increasing the performance.

In terms of overclocking, the board has the basic options like voltage for dimm and cpu, cpu freq range of up to 300MHz and a up to 25x multiplier option. There are options to lock PCI and PCIe too. For overclocking options, please see Gallery for BIOS options. In our overclocking test, we set the HT multiplier to 4x (800MHz) and set the CPU multiplier to 10x, CPU Vcore to 1.4v and push the CPU CLK to 285MHz.

Overall, the board works well with both integrated and external graphics card. You can also do a multi monitor with 2 displays. The chipset is rather hot, and I would suggest putting a fan on it. As this is a low cost chipset, it will be good for users who just needs a PC with basic usage/games. The chipset also does not have purevideo decoding built in unlike the 6150. eSATA which is a good feature is also missing from this board. I would say, this is really a board more suitable for OEMs manufacturers where cost is the ultimate factor.

Pricing (US)

Pricing (UK)

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Pros

• Hot Plug SATA
• SATA II RAID
• 7.1 HD audio
• VISTA Premium Hardware Ready

Cons

• No eSATA
• No 1394
• No GbE
• Chipset is very hot
• PCIe x8

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.