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ConclusionWe won't make this conclusion a long one. Albatron does as promised and even a little more. This mainboard is quite affordable and performing in the highest ranks as it can easily keep up with more expensive mainboards. The things we liked of course have to be performance, price, decent overclocking features (although the real tweakers will miss a couple of features though). The digital SLI switch is a very welcome addition, all SLI mainboard should have this, why manually swap a SLI selector card while we are in the digital era? Then there is the Dual BIOS functionality via ABS. Pretty funny and innovative feature eh? Now granted, only once in my lifetime I had a BIOS go sour on me, but if this should ever happen to you, this little feature will be a gift from heaven for sure as you can resuscitate that backplane of yours within second.

For a budget SLI mainboard performance is as good as it gets so don't go thinking that you pay less and get less performance, nope not at all. In fact, in combination with the processor we used this was the fastest gaming system I have ever had in my lab, of course the two GeForce 7800 GTX helped out a little also ;) Stability was not an issue at all and everything worked and functions as promised and with everything I mean from Serial ATA to your Gigabit network controller everything works really well out of the box. Since this is a very price competitive mainboard the onboard sound solution is probably not the most out of this world solution. But hey, it's quite good, way above average and since you have both multi-channel analog and digital outputs on the mainboard, you pretty much secured a fine sound experience.

Overall if you are a gamer, then an AMD platform definitely is the way to go as you'll get more bang for your bucks. In combo with the an NFORCE4 mainboard you are guaranteed to get the most out of your gaming experience. The mainboard performed very well in all our benchmarks. For that lower price you have to give up a few smaller things which you'll find back in only one Serial ATA cable, no extra USB bracket, no firewire and stuff like that. But hey, this is a 100% top notch mainboard that comes with a lot of other good options, 5.1 channel sound, gigabit Ethernet and SLI functionality. All you normally need can be found on this mainboard.

Overall I can only say that I was very much pleased with overall performance and stability, it simply was a great experience. Next to that this system, once setup properly, was extremely stable even when overclocked. The nForce 4 SLI mainboards are a hip and trendy product for those that opt for the high-end path. This mainboard however can bring the mainstream user a little closer to SLI, which is something I can only applaud, the price is just fantastic as you can buy this product for roughly 135  USD / 110 EUR and I have to highly recommend it.

Thanks to Albatron for supplying this mainboard and hey, if you do not want to go for an AMD platform or SLI then check out our Albatron mainboard competition that will be launched today, all info can be found right here !

Product: NFORCE4 SLI  Mainboard
Series: K8SLI
Manufacturer: Albatron
MSRP: 135 USD