can anyone please tell me roughly what a cnr slot is for, and what the benefits are, or give me link to a good site that explains it? thanks in advance

Communications and Networking Riser (CNR) CNR slots have kind of come and gone, for a while everybody was putting them on mainboards, and then the makers of 'decent' mainboards realized that no one was using them, so now they are dissappearing again. They are/were a way for board manufacturers to access chipset functions without putting access on-board (and free, or included in the price) so that you have to purchase a 'riser' card to access those functions. Used mainly for sound and modem functions they are generally shunned in the hardware community (because folks either tend to buy 'real' soundcards and modems, or they already have those items) and as I said they are dissappearing again. The modems gave trouble in different parts of the country. There was a riser card on certain chipsets that added TV-out to some Intel boards (810-815), but I have never seen one and really can't imagine it, because the on-board video was so poor.

Thanks alot, that was very helpfull