New INTEL SLI Capable Motherboard from ECS

ECS just finished presenting its new Nforce 590 SLI chipset aimed at the INTEL users. PN1 SLI2 ATX motherboard is as good as you can get when you pair Nvidia chipsets with INTEL CPU. Maybe it's not the greatest idea, since we all know the limitations Nvidia chipsets have when it comes to overclocking INTEL CPUs, but it is currently the only certified solution able to run SLI on an INTEL platform. I however hoped to see a C55 chipset revision instead of the low overclocker C19. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer, since this Motherboard is based on c19-A revision.

The board itself features 46 PCI Express needed to offer sufficient bandwidth for 2 PCI-E x16 slots, 1 PCI-E x4 slot and 2 PCI-E x1 slots. Up to 6 SATA II drives can be connected and even 2 P-ATA connectors are available with fully capable RAID implementation. Digging even deeper, we find 8-channel HD audio, SATA II integrated solution and all the USB 2.0 ports you'll ever need. If you sum it up, you'll quickly realize that ECS cooked up a complete Motherboard. What remains to be seen is how it competes against other Nvidia solutions released with the same purpose. And it's safe to say that there are sufficient manufacturers eager enough to offer similar implementations.

I was surprised to find out that, depending on the implementation, an Nforce 590 board can host 16GB of Ram, thing that applies also to this product. I don't understand why you could need more than 4GB of Ram in a non-server environment, but I'm sure that future Windows versions will eventually change my mind.