Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9

     The nForce 430MCP is paired with the GeForce 6150 GPU which nVidia hopes to position as a player in the media center PC market. The chipset and GPU have all of the high performance features found in their high-end product line. While the 6150 GPU may not be best suited for intricate game play, the presence of a PCI Express x16 slot gives builders the ability to add in and upgrade the system to a more comfortable video system. As it ships, the chipset has direct support for all nVidia technologies: Pure Video, High Definition MPEG-2 and WMV hardware acceleration, Advanced motion adaptive de-interlacing, an Integrated HDTV encoder, the CineFX 3 engine, UltraShadow II, Intellisample 3, nView multi-display support, Gigabit Ethernet as well as RAID support with SATA 3GB capable drives.

     Gigabyte has based the GA-K8N51PVMT-9 on this chipset/GPU combo and offers this bundle at a very low price. With a microATX form factor, the board and bundle are packaged for small form factor type enclosures. This explains the lack of additional USB and Firewire brackets, since most enclosures have header connectors for these popular accessories anyway. The SATA cable enclosed is tipped with Gigabyte's special self-locking connector to ensure the cables don't work themselves free. The driver disc also features a one click installation routine which will get the board up and running in Windows XP with no interaction required from the user, to include the many system restarts which will happen along the way. Gigabyte also includes Norton Internet Security 2005, Adobe Acrobat Reader 6, and their own Easy Tune 5 overclocking and hardware monitoring tools on the CD