ECS NF650iSLIT-A is a mid range SLI board ready for the LGA775 Intel Core 2 Extreme (FSB 1333MHz OC)/ Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo / Pentium D/ Pentuym 4 / Celeron D. That is to say, this board should be able to handle all existing Conroe Processors including the upcoming FSB 1333 variants.

In terms of performance, this board's internal processing is on par to the more expensive nForce 680i boards. The major difference with the ECS design of the 650i board is the missing switch card. ECS has fixed the 2 PCIe channels to run at PCIe x8. Whether you are running a single card or dual cards, the slots will still function only at PCIe x 8 instead of a single PCIe x16. This is by design of the mainboard.

This definitely will impact the graphics performance. In our test, we find taht the difference can be up to 4%. That is not really a lot as it only appears on certain games that requires such bandwidth.

In terms of features, the board supports Dual Channel DDR2-800 of up to 32GB of 4 unbuffered DIMMs. The onboard LAN is a GbE by Marvell and audio is from Realtek using ALC 883. The board also has an optional 1394. The 4 SATA II ports can also be configured to run in RAID 0, 1, 0+1,5 or JBOD. Behind the mainboard are connectors for SPDIF.

Overclocking options are there which allows users to control the FSB easily through BIOS. Alternatively you can use nTune to make the changes within Windows. In our o/c test, we can POST the E6300 up to 1550FSB (or 387MHz) x 7.

Docuementation is only in English but it is quite detail.

Overall, the board runs stable with our QX6700. Although there is no LinkBoost or other dual GbE, the NF650iSLIT-A is the board that will not burn a hole in your pocket. The only regret is the Fixed single slot at 8x. The package also comes with a manual and SLI bridge. The board is also more affordable for those who wish to have SLI with ConRoe.
 

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Pros

• Dual PCIe x8 for SLI

• HD Audio

• S/PDIF

• FSB 1333 support

• Affordable

Cons

• PCIe slot stucked at 8x

• Packaging

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.