We are still really anticipating that PCI-Express will be better than it is now so we won't place too much of the blame on Foxconn for that. AGP is still very fast, and I would say on an A64 platform, especially the dual-channel 939 it is perhaps faster, or at least a little bit more tweakable for more gain. There are surely more than those kind of variables that are working against the transformation of AMD processor boards, but I suppose those opinions will change as soon as more manufacturers adopt the newer 939 chipsets so that they can mature. Fro example, the DFI UT is such a great motherboard that despite its single channel platform it still holds it own against the 939. It is a mature motherboard, whereas the 939 boards we have tested so far have just been, well... quirky.

     Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, the Foxconn board does hold its own, albeit a tad slower than others. Like we mentioned in our introduction, it is a budget conscious motherboard that has an array of features and is suitable for those of you wanting something such as a 2800-3000 Winchester processor with a mid-range video card like the 6600GT we used in testing. We observed with some good memory that every game we tested has more than its share of fps, so it should be just fine and trouble-free.

Test Setup

AMD Athlon 3500 .90nm w/ retail HSF
Apollo 6600GT PCI-E 128mb
PDP Systems Patriot XBL D.C. 2x512mb
Fortron Source AX-500A 500W PSU
2x74gb WD Raptors in RAID 0
Shuttle CR40 DVD+RWDL

Gaming

Synthetic (Courtesy of Futuremark Inc.)

Conclusion

     Our overall thoughts are mixed over the Foxconn NF4 Ultra board. It is a very solid board, but we had a real hard time with it. The included driver disk was a Frisbee and required manual installation of the nVidia platform drivers. Of course a quick glance around the web reveals that Foxconn isn't the only board with this problem, nVidia's lazy driver development is. Still this should have been a bulletin or perhaps a mention of it to us so we didn't have to waste the time to install the OS more than once.

     Overclocking the Foxconn board was something we were looking forward to, especially since we finally observed some much needed options. This didn't happen, since we could never get the board to run solid enough to finish a set of benchmarks at anything above 210Mhz. We know that this particular processor will do 2700, but we didn't even come close even after hours, upon hours of toggling through BIOS adjustments.

     Other than these somewhat major flaws, the board was solid at default speed, and a close look at the price tag reveals that that is what Foxconn's intentions were. Its just hard to really rate this board since it basically just needs a good BIOS, and some decent drivers. I suppose it may be from the cause of wanting to get the board into the market before dual cores start appearing. It was just hurried, and seems like it wasn't even tried to be operational under overclocked conditions, therefore we can't recommend it for the Overclocker, but it is a nice option for those of you out there just needing a basic 939 board.