1.3Special features

1.3.1Product highlights

Latest processor technology

The motherboard comes with a 940-pin AM2 socket that supports AMD Athlon™ 64 X2/Athlon™ 64/Athlon™ 64 FX/Sempron™ processor. With an integrated low- latency high-bandwidth memory controller and a highly scalable HyperTransport™ technology-based system bus, the motherboard provides a powerful platform for your diverse computing needs, increased office productivity, and enhanced digital media experience. See page 2-6 for details.

NVIDIA® Scalable Link Interface (SLI™)

The NVIDIA® Scalable Link Interface (SLI™) technology allows two graphics processing units (GPUs) in a single system. This technology takes advantage of the PCI Express™ bus architecture and features intelligent hardware and software solutions that allows multiple GPUs to work together and achieve exceptional graphics performance.

NVIDIA nForce® 500 SLI™

NVIDIA nForce® 500 SLI™ media and communication processors (MCPs) deliver a complete range of solutions for AMD-based discrete platforms. Performance enhancing features include NVIDIA® LinkBoost™ technology to automatically increase the bus speed and NVIDIA® SLI™ technology for scalable graphics performance.

AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet!™ Technology

The motherboard supports the AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet!™ Technology that dynamically and automatically changes the CPU speed, voltage and amount of power depending on the task the CPU performs. See page 4-24.

DDR2 memory support

The motherboard supports DDR2 memory that features data transfer rates of 800/667/533 MHz to meet the higher bandwidth requirements of the latest

3D graphics, multimedia, and Internet applications. The dual-channel DDR2 architecture doubles the bandwidth of your system memory to boost system performance, eliminating bottlenecks with peak bandwidths of up to 12.8 GB/s. See page 2­11 and 2-12 for details.

Serial ATA 3Gb/s RAID

The motherboard supports the next-generation Serial ATA hard drives based on the SATA 3Gb/s storage specification. The onboard NVIDIA nForce® 500 SLI™ MCP allows RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, and JBOD. See page 2‑25.

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Chapter 1: Product introduction