Serial ATA 3Gb/s and SATA-On-The-Go

The motherboard supports the Serial ATA 3 Gb/s technology through the Silicon Image Serial ATA interfaces and the NVIDIA¨ SLIª - Intel¨ Edition chipset. The Serial ATA 3 Gb/s specification provides twice the bandwidth of the current Serial ATA products with a host of new features, including Native Command Queuing (NCQ), Power Management (PM) Implementation Algorithm, and Hot Swap. Serial ATA allows thinner, more flexible cables with lower pin count and reduced voltage requirements.

Leveraging these Serial ATA 3Gb/s features is the *SATA-On-The-Go. This external port on the rear panel I/O provides smart setup, hot-plug and support for up to 16 devices with port-multiplier functions. See pages 2-28 and 2-29 for details. (*Deluxe model only)

Dual RAID solution

Onboard RAID controllers provide the motherboard with dual-RAID functionality that allows you to select the best RAID solution using IDE or Serial ATA devices.

The NVIDIA¨ nForce4¨ SLIª allows RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, JBOD, and a software patch to support RAID 5 configuration for four SATA 3Gb/s and two PATA connectors. See pages 2-27 and 5-23.

The *Sil3132R controller supports two additional SATA 3Gb/s connectors and allows RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations through the internal and external SATA ports. See pages 2-28 and 5-30 for details.

(*Deluxe model only)

Dual Gigabit LAN solution (Deluxe model only)

The motherboard comes with dual Gigabit LAN controllers to provide the total solution for your networking needs. These network controllers use the PCI Express segment to provide faster data bandwidth for your wired or wireless Internet, LAN, and file sharing requirements. See page 2-25 for details.

PCI Expressª interface

The motherboard fully supports PCI Express, the latest I/O interconnect technology that speeds up the PCI bus. PCI Express features point-to-point serial interconnections between devices and allows higher clockspeeds by carrying data in packets. This high speed interface is software compatible with existing PCI specifications. See pages 2-20 and 2-21 for details.

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Chapter 1: Product introduction