The N570SM2AA is a full featured ATX motherboard that comes with two PCI-E slots for SLI setup. Unlike many other motherboards, it sports an External SATA connector and both optical and co-axial SPDIF outputs. Foxconn has implemented active cooling for the NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI chipset, which is now rarely seen on any board, since most motherboards opt for a noiseless passive cooling solution. As many as eleven storage/optical drives can be attached to this motherboard through the SATA II and parallel ide interfaces, and that doesn't include the external SATA connector. All SATA II ports are programmed for RAID support.

In our tests, the N570SM2AA was very fast, in some tests, faster than the C51XEM2AA, mostly in the memory tests. This could be explained in that each motherboard decides the "best" timings for the memory modules. There were minute differences in games, nothing to get excited about though (1~2FPS).

Passing to the board itself, the overall design is "tidy", with however, one flaw in our opinion. The color scheme for the memory banks, could confuse many users - dual channel modules should be installed in banks 1+2 (differing colours), and not banks 1+3 of the same colour as is standard. We would also like the PCI-E slots to have more distance between them, so that the larger air cooled graphics cards can fit without any problems with enough room for proper ventilation.

There are 6x SATAII connectors available for HDD and optical storage devices. Several expansion slots are available also, but the required cables are not included in the retail package. Overclocking is possible with this motherboard, but the higher priced C51XEM2AA is much better in this area. While we got a ceiling at 230FSB with the AMD X2 4600+ (multiplier at 10x), when the processor was running at full speed (12x multiplier), the FSB dropped to 216 (vs 230 for the C51XEM2AA). Also keep in mind that nTune can be used to control the motherboard partially, whereas the C51XEM2AA can be controlled 100% with nTune, providing greater flexibility and overclocking capabilities for end users. Fine tuning the CPU/DRAM voltages under the BIOS is also a headache, since you don't have the absolute values, but only relative offsets from the default.

Ending our presentation, we can say that the N570SM2AA is much cheaper than the C51XEM2AA ($126 vs $190), offering good performance, but with not as good overclocking capabilities as the the C51XEM2AA. Our Editor's choice for the AM2 platform is still the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, but if you need a low priced Foxconn motherboard for your new AM2 processor, take a look at the Foxconn N570SM2AA.