Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR Motherboard Review

One of the other enhancements to the nForce3 chipset is the inclusion of a Gigabit LAN controller in the MCP. Onboard Ethernet isn't new for the nForce3 but the previous controller was limited to 10/100 speeds. While GigaLAN capability is built into the chipset there still needs to be an interpreter chip to convert the chipset signals to something usable by the RJ45 connector (Ethernet over copper). This chip is called a PHY (Physical layer chip) and negotiates data transfers between the network and chipset.

This motherboard doesn't come with a huge number of included goodies but there should be enough to get you up and running with the bare minimums. As always the documentation is very thorough and consists of a quick start guide, motherboard and software manuals, driver disks and included utility software.

When AMD started to include the primary memory controller with the processor core they removed one of the only items that separated the different chipsets in terms of performance. Knowing this nVidia has made a few breakthroughs in their latest chipset that begin to focus on overall usability and protection.

Many of us are already familiar with the nVidia onboard sound. Personally I am not (and might never be) one for onboard audio but I will admit the CineSurround headphone option did wonders for sound quality.

This year at Computex nVidia was demonstrating the fine art of man-in-the-middle attacks. The process involves a user on the network "spoofing" their identity to make your computer think that their computer is the router to the outside world. The issue with this is that if you are browsing a p0rn site or checking your online bank balance the "spoofing" user will be able to intercept a copy of data originally intended for your computer. nVidias new Firewall technology is a driver level software firewall that not only will protect you from outside intruders (over the network, please don't think this firewall will keep people out of your house) but will also guard you against such man-in-the-middle attacks.

The firewall and network configurations are administered via a convenient web interface (that incidentally is served up over Apache) located on the local machine. By default this interface isn't viewable to the network but a checkbox is available that allows you to override this "feature".