If a processor is considered the heart of a computer, then a motherboard must represent the veins and arteries. In either case you want a strong heart and free-flowing arteries for a healthy life. The same can be said for a computer where your system is only as good as the weakest link. After all, the features and specifications of a motherboard can greatly affect what video cards, processors, and memory your system is capable of running. Today we will be reviewing a motherboard manufactured by ECS Elitegroup, a company that has been in the business since 1987. The particular model we will be reviewing today is being marketed as a motherboard for the computing enthusiast, the ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI Motherboard.


As with all of our reviews here at Bigbruin.com, lets begin by listing the features and specifications of the ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI Motherboard.

Features:

Core 2 Extreme	With the Core 2 processor family, the extreme version gets a higher clock speed, larger caches and a faster FSB. The high-end processor features the latest arsenal of performance-rich technologies.
FSB1333	Supports the latest 1333MHz front side bus Intel ® Pentium ® 4 CPU
LGA775	Supports LGA775 Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology.
ATA133	Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE devices, data transfer rate up to 133MB/s
Serial-ATA2	Double bus bandwidth which provides blazingly high disk performance, ensuring your computing experience will be faster, more reliable, and completely with current and future hardware and software.
RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5	Supports RAID 0 (Striped disk array), RAID 1 (Mirroring disk array), RAID 0+1 (A mirror of stripes), RAID 5 (Block Interleaved Distributed Parity). Provides users the performance and protection.
nTune	Easy, safe and high performance over-clocking available for NVIDIA NFORCE. Performance wizards allow automatic tuning for optimal performance or the quietest operation.
Core 2 Quad	The new Core2 Quad processor combines two dual-core chips in a single package that plugs into a single chip socket. It enables even more multitasking with greater performance.
Giga LAN	Supports a high transfer rate up to 1 Gigabit
PCI EXPRESS x16	Delivers up to a 4x increase in graphics and 2x I/O bandwidth for smooth multimedia performance
64bit Support	Allows platforms to access more memory and larger files. Large memory intensive applications, such as audio and video encoding, complex engineering programs and games, can see dramatic performance increases.
Dual Channel DDR2 800	Doubles the bandwidth of your system memory up to 12.8GB/s and pumps up the system performance.
Audio	8 Channel High Definition Audio

This motherboard comes packed with many features sure to make an enthusiast happy. The ECS PN2-SLI2+ supports the hugely popular Intel Core 2 Duo processors, along with all other socket 775 processors (even Core 2 Quad processors are supported). The board also supports SATA2 and comes with a built-in RAID controller allowing you to create RAID arrays in several configurations. Gigabit LAN (with two LAN ports) is also provided on this motherboard, as are three PCI Express slots (2 of which are capable of running modern video cards in SLI for increased performance). Of course this model also takes advantage of the latest memory technology with support for dual channel DDR2 800.