ASRock launches first NVIDIA 650iSLI based motherboard--Penryn1600SLI-110dB

[multimeter]

Penryn1600SLI-110dB

• LGA 775 for Intel^® Core™ 2 Extreme / Core™ 2 Quad / Core™ 2 Duo / Pentium^® Dual Core / Celeron^®, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
• NVIDIA^® 650iSLI (C55) + NVIDIA^® nForce 430 Chipsets
• All Solid Capacitor design
• Compatible with FSB1600/1333MHz CPUs

• Supports Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 x 4 DIMM slots, maximum capacity up to 8GB
• Supports NVIDIA^® SLI™
• 3 x PCI Express x16 slots (white @ x16 mode, yellow @ x8 mode)
• Supports Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
• Supports 2 x IEEE1394 ports (one port on back panel, one header on board)
• 4 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, JBOD and RAID 5) and NCQ functions
• 1 x WiFi/E header
• 7.1 CH Windows^® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection, supports DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec)
• ASRock OC Tuner
• Windows^® Vista™ Premium 2007 Logo Ready
• Free Bundle: ASRock SLI Bridge
• ASRock WiFi_SPDIF I/O Plus : 1 x Coaxial SPDIF Out Port, 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED, 1 x IEEE 1394 Port
• Price at 795 RMB

[Snoopy]

It's interesting that Asrock would release a 650i board now. It's good to see that they support Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield right out of the box. A number of present 650i boards apparently will not support the Quad core Penryn's.
I'll be a little surprised if we see this board in Canada.

[rippie]

I still don't get why MB manufacturers don't drop the PCI slots. They eat up a lot of space and are quite useless these days, PCI-e replacements are all over the place.

I like the fact that it has 3 PCI-e slots (dunno how many lanes are in there, but that doesn't really matter since you have a plethora of bandwidth anyways if would be 3*8x). Though I'm still waiting for the 5 slots PCI-e 8x mainboards :) 10x displays here we come ^^ I dig this mobo

[Rkwok]

Just an update, it will make it's way to Canada!

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Rkwok

Just an update, it will make it's way to Canada!

I am surprised! I look forward to seeing the reviews.

[rippie]

It supports Yorkfield? Was there not a problem with 650/780 and Yorkfield/penryn CPU's?

[Snoopy]

There is a problem with some 650/680 motherboards. Apparently some are/will be able to be made compatible with Yorkfield chips via a bios upgrade, while others can't. It appears that new releases of 650/680 boards (like this Asrock) can be manufactured with compatible components.
I've got a Gigabyte 650i board in one of my computers that is considered "doubtful" whether it will be compatible. It is presently listed as "being tested".

[bluetooth]

That is the problem of NVIDIA chip.set Just when Intel change some specs, NVIDIA chipsets won't work with the newer processors.