ECS GF8200A Black & ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI

Back in April we had looked at the ECS A780GM-A, which was a nice low-cost motherboard and had worked well under Linux with the newer desktop distributions. This motherboard had integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, which we had found to perform well and equivalent to a Radeon HD 2400PRO discrete graphics card. However, for those interested in NVIDIA graphics, there is the GeForce 8200 IGP that also performs well on Linux. If you are interested in the GeForce 8200 chipset, today we are looking at two of the cost-effective motherboards deploying this chipset: the ECS GF8200A Black and ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI.

Motherboard Specifications:

Processor
- AMD Phenom, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64, Sempron processors
- HyperTransport 3.0 CPU Interface
- Socket AM2+

Chipset
- NVIDIA GeForce 8200
- NVIDIA MCP78S Chipset

Graphics
- GeForce 8200 2D/3D Engine
- Integrated DirectX 10 Graphics Processor
- Maximum Memory Share Up To 512MB
- Supports NVIDIA Hybrid SLI

Memory
- Dual-Channel DDR2-1066
- 4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM
- Up to 32GB Memory Supported
- Supports DDR2-1066/800/667/533/400 MHz RAM

Expansion Slots
- 1 x PCI Express x16 2.0
- 3 x PCI (2 x PCI with the ASRock motherboard)
- 2 x PCI Express x1 (1 x PCI Express x1 with the ASRock motherboard)

Storage
- 2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices
- 5 x Serial ATA 2.0 devices
- 1 x eSATA
- RAID 0/1/0+1/5 configurations

Audio
- IDT 92HD206 (ECS GF8200A)
- 8 Channel Audio Specification

Network
- Realtek RTL8111B Gigabit (ECS GF8200A)
- PHY RTL8211B (ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI)

Form Factor
- ATX (ECS)
- Micro ATX (ASRock)

Contents:

Both the ECS GF8200A Black and ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI are cost-effective motherboards that each retail for under $80 USD. With a motherboard at this price, the accessories included are slim, but enough to get you going. The ASRock motherboard shipped with one ribbon FDD cable, one ribbon IDE cable, one Serial ATA data cable, one 4-pin molex to Serial ATA power adapter, one audio header cable, one I/O panel, two product driver CDs, and the user's manual. With the ECS motherboard were one ribbon IDE cable, two serial ATA data cables, one I/O panel, one quick start guide, one driver CD, and the user's manual.