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NVIDIA was exclusively synonymous with the "GeForce" brand for many years, but in recent times, they have been forging a name for themselves in the chipset market as well. Their original nForce, while highly-touted, arrived much too late, facing a competition that had already pulled their trump cards. They learned their lesson, and when the time came around for the much-improved nForce 2, NVIDIA literally obliterated the competition. By about this time last year, NVIDIA had over 50% of the AMD Athlon chipset market.

When the time came around for the new K8 platform, NVIDIA let things slip a tad, and VIA Technologies ended up garnering a large share of the K8 market with their K8T800. NVIDIA's nForce 3 Pro 150 lacked some key features, and NVIDIA made sure they were there when they released the nForce 3 250 series. nForce 3 250 and 250Gb-based motherboards are now abundant, possibly more so than equivalent K8T800 boards. My trusty (though aging) MSI Neo2 Platinum with its nForce 250Gb is still going strong, and it is a respectable and high-performing product indeed. nForce 3-based boards continue to be strong sellers where PCI Express is not a concern.

The next logical step in nForce development was that of going to PCI Express -- enter nForce 4. Increasing their lead over their competitors, NVIDIA made a huge push to release nForce 4 in retail volume, and that move has paid off. They were the first to retail with an Athlon 64 PCI Express chipset, and with that they brought a host of other improvements, such as the highly-touted SLI ("Scalable Link Interface"). As I write this, it is impossible not to find an abundance of nForce 4 boards, ranging all the way from introductory-priced solutions to feature-ladden SLI products. Whether you are interested in enterprise-level stability, top-notch performance, or overclockability, all you ever hear is "nForce, nForce, nForce". NVIDIA truly has made great inroads into the chipset market ever since the ghostly release of the original nForce back in 2001.

This is all fine and dandy. Athlon XP and Athlon 64 users have been in a state of chipset bliss for years thanks to NVIDIA -- but what about the Intel camp? After being ignored for years by NVIDIA, the company finally released a corresponding Intel-oriented chipset in April of this year, after the two companies signed a cross-licensing agreement in November of 2004.

With the exception of our NVIDIA-supplied review kit, which we took a look at in our Nforce 4 SLI for Intel article, we have for you today the first motherboard in our lab based on that very chipset -- ASUS' P5ND2-SLI Deluxe, based on the NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI for Intel chipset.

ASUSTEK Computer, Inc. is known the world over for the top-notch quality of their products. For as long as I can remember, ASUS-brand motherboards have always made the top of recommended lists, purely for their reliability, build quality, features, and support. In 2004 alone, ASUS shipped 40 million motherboards, basically placing an ASUS motherboard in one out of every four desktop PCs sold. The ASUS name has become synonymous with superb quality -- and we will not expect anything less in today's review of their P5ND2-SLI motherboard.

Specifications

The specifications, as ripped from ASUS' web site, are as follows:

This is an absolute boatload of features. Let's read on.