Sound Environment

The 5.1 channel audio is based on the AC97 CODEC found on a myriad of nForce solutions around the world. Our experience with the audio on this board was excellent. Whether in game or listening to MP3's the audio was crisp and full of sonic purity. The reproduction of surround was very good, providing a full spatial expansion in a 360 degree environment.  Game play clearly gave us the sensation of events happening all around us, so we can vouch for the 5.1 operations.

Video Playback

When viewing videos from either Media Player or Quick Time, the results were crisp and clean with high definition detail found on high end machines. The GeForce 6100 performs great using both players giving us no difference in over all looks and performance than on our SLI Dual core high end gaming rig.

System BIOS

As I always say if you seen one nForce BIOS then you have seen them all. While this holds water in most cases, it has all the basic functionality found on most nForce designs with the exception of a few proprietary features found from brand to brand, its all the same basically. Our system fired up and auto configured everything we attached to it.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA MCP51 is a step in the right direction, it shows chip integration can deliver lower costs to system integrators while creating a budget level system that can and will play games at lower resolutions.

This board has the capability to scream with the right configuration. Stuffing a 7900GTX into this board with a X2 dual core AMD CPU will get you high end performance without the need to pay out the ying yang for a mother board.  However our tests are based strickly on the GeForce 6100. To get an idea of out of the box performance we wanted to test with budget minded hardware. What's nice about this board is, anyone can grab the cpu and ram off of ebay and be up and running for a couple hundred in chump change. Think about it, a 939  mobo for $59.99USD that will respond in performance, based on what hardware you stuff in it.

If you are a system integrator or engineer and need a budget solution and need to build 15 to 20 office systems and want to save time and money, then the new MCP51 based 939's might be for you. We like the ABIT board and are impressed with the high end features and entry level price index.  Any budget minded individual can save big money and time  with this setup. Configuring a system with external video  adds cost to your build, which eats profitability. Wiith integrated video  it makes perfect sense to migrate to the NF95 in the office environment.

The NF95 can certainly be a high performance machine if you want to spend big bucks on a high end CPU and external GPU, adding to the over all cost of ownership. It's up to you, call it entry level, mid range or high end, it all really depends on what your willing to stuff on this product.  Out of the box this is probably one of the best budget solutions going with the use of the MCP51 chipset allowing cost effective computing in the office environment. The budget minded can build a system dirt cheap with surplus old stock hardware and the enthusiasts can stuff  new in the box latest and greatest supporting CPU and video card on the NF95 and end up with a real performance machine.

Pros

• High end features
• Excellent price
• Easy setup and installation
• Significant D3D performance at lower resolutions
• Very cost effective in an office environment

Cons

• N/A