Intel Motherboards: Something Wicked This Way Comes...
by Gary Key on October 12, 2005 2:13 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is an excellent and very unique product offering. This board will more than satisfy most Intel enthusiasts and is an excellent companion for the Intel Pentium D processor series. In fact, NVIDIA has solved their dual core compatibility issues, which allowed this board to shine as a general usage workstation with the unique advantage of offering up to 10 display output.
We have to commend the engineering effort behind this board and applaud the results. While it is exciting that Quad SLI is available from a hardware perspective, it is disappointing that driver level support from NVIDIA is currently not available; although, we are sure that NVIDIA is aware of this. This should not detract prospective users of this board as it offers a world of potential for someone wanting multiple display output utilizing the latest in video technology, or simply a home user needing a board that will satisfy multiple uses.
Although the board that we received was a pre-production sample and utilized an engineering BIOS, it performed as well or better than most boards currently in production. In fact, the stability offered by the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was impressive to say the least as it did not crash once during the entire testing phase and recovered beautifully from zealous overclocking testing. With that said, let's move on to our opinions on this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer looking for SLI, or a workstation user/business owner/video creation fanatic looking for numerous display outputs, then this is the board for you. The variety and potential methods of display options are unparalleled in the general market today. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation. If you utilize the new 81.84 drivers, you can now match like GPU cores from different video card suppliers among other benefits.
In the on-board audio area, this board offers the standard AC97 setup utilizing the familiar Realtek ALC850. While this solution is acceptable for office applications and Internet Tetris, it does not match the HD Audio on-board solutions of the other nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition boards. While serious gamers and audiophiles will certainly want an add-in solution, it is not acceptable for a board of this caliber to be utilizing this codec, considering the alternatives available now.
In the storage area, this board offers the standard plethora of options available from the nForce4 SLI Chipset along with class leading performance. However, as with other Gigabyte Royal boards, we certainly wish the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) option was available considering the video centric design of this board.
In the performance area, this board was at or constantly near the top in most categories. The board is very balanced and will happily run the same benchmarks at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe that the performance will only improve as the board enters the production phase.
I think that Mr. Dark would look at the 10 display output of this board and believe his magic created such a wonder when, in reality, it was the belief of a small group of engineers who wanted to win the day that brought this excellent board to market.
The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is an excellent and very unique product offering. This board will more than satisfy most Intel enthusiasts and is an excellent companion for the Intel Pentium D processor series. In fact, NVIDIA has solved their dual core compatibility issues, which allowed this board to shine as a general usage workstation with the unique advantage of offering up to 10 display output.
We have to commend the engineering effort behind this board and applaud the results. While it is exciting that Quad SLI is available from a hardware perspective, it is disappointing that driver level support from NVIDIA is currently not available; although, we are sure that NVIDIA is aware of this. This should not detract prospective users of this board as it offers a world of potential for someone wanting multiple display output utilizing the latest in video technology, or simply a home user needing a board that will satisfy multiple uses.
Although the board that we received was a pre-production sample and utilized an engineering BIOS, it performed as well or better than most boards currently in production. In fact, the stability offered by the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was impressive to say the least as it did not crash once during the entire testing phase and recovered beautifully from zealous overclocking testing. With that said, let's move on to our opinions on this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer looking for SLI, or a workstation user/business owner/video creation fanatic looking for numerous display outputs, then this is the board for you. The variety and potential methods of display options are unparalleled in the general market today. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation. If you utilize the new 81.84 drivers, you can now match like GPU cores from different video card suppliers among other benefits.
In the on-board audio area, this board offers the standard AC97 setup utilizing the familiar Realtek ALC850. While this solution is acceptable for office applications and Internet Tetris, it does not match the HD Audio on-board solutions of the other nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition boards. While serious gamers and audiophiles will certainly want an add-in solution, it is not acceptable for a board of this caliber to be utilizing this codec, considering the alternatives available now.
In the storage area, this board offers the standard plethora of options available from the nForce4 SLI Chipset along with class leading performance. However, as with other Gigabyte Royal boards, we certainly wish the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) option was available considering the video centric design of this board.
In the performance area, this board was at or constantly near the top in most categories. The board is very balanced and will happily run the same benchmarks at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe that the performance will only improve as the board enters the production phase.
I think that Mr. Dark would look at the 10 display output of this board and believe his magic created such a wonder when, in reality, it was the belief of a small group of engineers who wanted to win the day that brought this excellent board to market.
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SpaceRanger - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Yup.. Just compared the two, and they are IDENTICAL Pic's, just doctored to show THG and AT... VERY WEAK!!!!!THG:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a342/Arathon/ten...">THG 10 Monitor Image
AT:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a342/Arathon/ten...">AT 10 Monitor Image
johnsonx - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
I doubt one photo or the other was actually doctored, but it is pretty amazing that NOTHING is moved between the two shots... not even the mouse has moved so much as a butt-hair.This does lend credence to the theory that Gigabyte prepared the 10-monitor shots themselves.
at80eighty - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
You got issues with butt hair ? :-)
BigLan - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
It looks like this shot was taken at a gigabyte facility, probably in taiwan or china... the blue and red stickers on the monitors look to be chinese characters.vijay333 - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
My guess would be that Gigabyte did this for each one of the sites that it had sent samples to, assuming that they would not be able to set this up themselves (monitors, cards etc). Still, this should have been mentioned in the review itself...Gary Key - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
Good Day,I did not want to use the Gigabyte lab shot since THG had already published their version of it. However, since we could not get the revision 2 3D1 cards in time for testing I thought there would be more comments about lack of proof on 10 monitors than issues with the lab shots. I should have noted that in the article.
I was able to get 8 monitors to work with the video setup I had available. However, I found utilizing four monitors was an ideal situation with the two 7800 GTXs. :-)
Bitter - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Seems a bit....odd, that THG has the exact same picture of the 10 display setup using the exact same displays with associated cables and hardware (and even boxes) in the exact same place...with the sole differance being the background color and logo. Yet THG had their review on 10/4. Yet both sites talk about setting up the system with 10 displays as if they had the gear in house...I smell something rotten here. When you look at the test setups they read almost in stereo. Did either one of these sites actually have the hardware "in the shop" to test any of this out on????johnsonx - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
yeah, as soon as I saw that shot I quickly clicked on "Comments" to see if anyone else had already pointed it out... early bird gets the worm I guess.If I had to guess, I would venture that both THG and AT reviewed the hardware at a common location hosted by Gigabyte.
phaxmohdem - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Obviously this board is teh suxors since there is no uber AMD variant. What is this now THG?? Pfft.More seriously though, that is kinda cool in its own right. While I wouldn't mind having 4 monitors, 10 seems a bit overkill unless you are an uber l33t day trader or something. I mean wholy crap! Can you imagine the heat that bad boy will put out too? STRONG ass power supply + P4 Dual Core + 4 High End Graphics Cards??? + HDD's + RAM = Heat Stroke in the comfort of your office chair.
Chuckles - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
So...4x$500 for graphics+~$250 for the board+$1000 for the CPU+$200 for RAM.
$3500 for a system. Geez.