ECS NF650iSLIT-A is a good mainstream socket 775 motherboard supporting the new 1,333 MHz bus, DDR2-800 memories and SLI.
Competing directly with ASUS P5N-E SLI, it has a few advantages over this competitor: you don’t need to change the position of a small board to enable SLI mode, it provides full 7.1 analog speaker support on the rear panel with independent jacks (ASUS P5N-E SLI supports only 5.1 speakers), it has an optical SPDIF output soldered on the rear panel and it is a little bit cheaper. ASUS P5N-E SLI, on the other hand, provides two Firewire ports, an eSATA port and a far better overclocking capability.
Since both motherboards have the same performance, choosing between the two should be based on the features you like the most. Thus ECS NF650iSLIT-A should be picked by the user that prefers having more audio connectors and is willing to connect his or her computer to a home theater receiver thru optical cable and is not into overclocking, while ASUS P5N-E SLI should be picked by the user that wants eSATA, Firewire and is into overclocking.
Honestly, we think ASUS P5NE-SLI brings more features for its price tag – which is only USD 8, on average, higher than NF650iSLIT-A’s –, providing a better cost/benefit ratio than this product from ECS. Since we are talking about averages, you can even find ASUS P5N-E SLI costing less than ECS NF650iSLIT-A.
Of course high-end motherboards will provide a better performance and more features, but they are more expensive. Some mainstream motherboards like ASUS P5B are faster and cost around the same thing, however they do not provide SLI.
Besides its flaw of not allowing us to feed our memories with more than 1.95 V – a major flaw that prevents you from installing overclocking-oriented memories on this motherboard, as they are usually fed with 2.30 V –, there is just only one thing we didn’t like about it: its on-board audio. Even though it is 7.1 it uses a low-end codec, Realtek ALC883, which provides a low signal-to-noise ratio for its inputs – only 85 dB. This means we do not recommend you to use its on-board audio for capturing and editing analog audio, or you will have a lot of noise on your final file. Also the maximum sampling rate for its inputs is of 96 KHz, while its outputs supports up to 192 KHz. The signal-to-noise ratio for its output is of 95 dB, which is ok for the average user. This is the same codec used by its competitor from ASUS.
