ECS KN2 SLI Extreme - NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 (Socket 939)
 

Frankly speaking, the new ECS product surprised our seasoned staff in the platform department of our web site so much that some of them expressed quite radical opinions — not to test this motherboard at all. You can see the troublemaker well on the photo — the proprietary slot, which is nearly as long as the board itself. An S.D.G.E card to be installed there (it's included into the bundle and is not sold separately; the card is not optional, as the motherboard does not start up without it) provides full-speed functionality of two PCI Express x16 slots. Right after the announcement of this product we assumed that ECS decided to cut down expenses and adapted a motherboard with a cheap nForce4-series bridge (probably nForce4 Ultra) to support two full-speed PCIEx16 slots instead of designing a "normal" model, having soldered the sterling nForce4 SLI X16 chipset. We assumed that the Duo-N card also houses a cheap nForce4-series bridge, which will support the second graphics slot. That is a customer will be offered an every-little-helps kit, which is only formally compatible with nForce4 SLI X16, but cheaper and problematic in assemblage.