Very little without a pic or a model number...

If it has SATA, it's not that old.

Here is the mfg page for it.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-N650S … -DS4L-rev-10#ov

Good for high-end XP machine depending on what video card(s) you would use with it.

Ah, pic is posted now. It's a Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L

As with most later nForce chipsets, performance was good but the chipsets ran hot, very hot. Hence the huge heatsink on the northbridge and smaller though still normal northbridge-sized one on the southbridge. Ensure enough airflow.

But what sort of info are you looking for exactly?

Honestly, I have no idea on how to assess most components' effectiveness or quality. As I said earlier, I knew it was possibly a good XP MB due to the presence of both IDE and SATA, which would be a very specific window of time. I didn't know if it was a GOOD board or not, and I didn't know how to assess it that way. I also don't know how to find out if it has characteristics like "it runs hot" other than asking people

What makes something a good motherboard is that it is good for whatever you want to do with it. If you want to play windows xp games, it might be good for that, but it might not be a good for older retro stuff.

One notable limitation:
Doesn't support Wolfdale or Yorkfield

So the maximum is:
Core 2 Duo E6xxx
Core 2 Quad Q6xxx

And with 1333 FSB support, it could also OC a Q6600 to 3GHz - that's probably the most powerful it could do, and none too shabby even for something more than XP

Look, we can tell you all kinds of things, but we need to know what you are looking for to give you info that is relevant for you.

- What CPU do you want to run on it?
- What kind of GPU(s) are you considering?
- Apart from CPU, GPU and motherboard, what else is going into this system?
- Are you considering overclocking?
- What programs/games do you intend to run?
- Assuming we recommend against this board, what other options do you have?

In general I consider Gigabyte to produce some of the most reliable and 'sensible' (=enough useful features, not too much crap - and good solid polymer caps) boards in the 2005-2010 period. I was never a huge fan of nVidia chipsets for the Intel platform as they were expensive, ran hot and didn't offer me any compelling advantages over Intel-based alternatives. The one thing they did offer was SLI options for nVidia GPUs (at the time Intel chipsets only offered Crossfire for ATi GPUs), but that's only relevant if you want to run two nVidia GPUs. This specific board is a decent mid-range option, with everything you need for stock operation, but not much headroom in the CPU power supply for heavy overclocking.

All I know for now is that I'd like to make this into an XP gaming machine. I shoulda been a bit more specific on that point. I didn't know anything about it, especially not what sorts of components would work with this MB.
Heck, I wasn't even 100% sure if it was from the XP era, except for the inclusion of IDE and SATA on the same board

I presume you do have some experience with building computers?

Yeah. I've built my current system and modified several others. I'm also working on a Windows 98 gaming system

1. Check the cpu socket for misaligned pins. they should be placed in a nice uniform pattern.
2. I'd not push the board too much with OC (like raising voltages), the VRM is pretty lightly populated.

If it passes #1 I'd put the cheapest Core2 I can get my hands on and give it a go.