Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe: NVIDIA Dual x16 for the Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on November 6, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
It's a shame that the first task in reviewing the truly excellent Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe is to set the record straight. Despite what you may have seen at other web sites, we can tell you conclusively that the Asus A8N32-SLI is not 40% to 50% faster in some games than the current Dual x8 designs. Those who concluded this overlooked the impact of the new 81.85 NVIDIA drivers and 6.82 platform drivers on the board's performance. These new drivers are definitely faster - so much so that current NVIDIA owners should definitely upgrade their video drivers.
We truly expected no increase in performance at all with the new Asus Dual x16 once the playing field was leveled. What we actually found, however, was that the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is slightly faster in both single video and SLI running our current test suite games like Doom 3, Far Cry, and Aquamark 3. The A8N32-SLI is faster, but at levels that are generally within the margin of error.
There is more to the story though. While we can't fully explain why it is faster, we did find the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe to be as much as 8% faster on the newest games that we tested in SLI mode, and up to a whopping 17% faster in single video mode with single/dual 7800GTX video cards. These are significant increases in performance that can't be ignored. We don't know why this is the case, and we will be testing this further as more Dual x16 boards appear in the marketplace. Perhaps it is the Asus design, perhaps it is the MCP51, and perhaps it could be anything.
Please do not let the debunking of the 40% to 50% claims that others have made for this board's performance sway your opinion of the Asus A8N32-SLI. This is one fast Socket 939 motherboard worthy of a place in any enthusiast's Athlon 64 system. The 8-phase works very well to keep the board stable and cool, the heat pipes and no fans really work, and Asus even provides optional cooling fans for those who will use water cooling with this board. If you want to build a super performance, silent PC or a water-cooled or phase-change cooled super overclocker, the A8N32-SLI will serve you well. We couldn't say anything close to this about recent Asus boards, but Asus obviously designed this board to turn some heads in the Athlon 64 market.
The Asus A8N32-SLI is also a monster overclocker, reaching the highest overclock ever with our stock CPU and to 310FSB with a reduced multiplier. If you compare this performance to our other reviews of recent Asus Socket 939 boards, you may wonder if they were produced by the same company. Asus has become serious about Athlon 64, and it shows in the design, execution and performance of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.
The A8N32-SLI is blessed with a unique and very effective design that truly works. The 8-phase design behaves gracefully under extreme loads and remains much cooler than other 3- or 4-phase designs. This yields excellent stability and headroom that we have not seen before on an Asus Socket 939 design. Asus claims that the board is up to 15°C (36°F) cooler than conventional solutions, and we saw nothing in our testing to make us doubt this claim. The board remained cool and stable under the most difficult test conditions.
In the end, we still have some reservations as to whether Dual x16 makes any difference at all in video performance. It certainly appears to improve performance greatly in the latest, greatest, and most demanding games, but we will need to dismiss other potential explanations before we become a true believer. We do not, however, have reservations about the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. This board is a definite keeper.
It's a shame that the first task in reviewing the truly excellent Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe is to set the record straight. Despite what you may have seen at other web sites, we can tell you conclusively that the Asus A8N32-SLI is not 40% to 50% faster in some games than the current Dual x8 designs. Those who concluded this overlooked the impact of the new 81.85 NVIDIA drivers and 6.82 platform drivers on the board's performance. These new drivers are definitely faster - so much so that current NVIDIA owners should definitely upgrade their video drivers.
We truly expected no increase in performance at all with the new Asus Dual x16 once the playing field was leveled. What we actually found, however, was that the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is slightly faster in both single video and SLI running our current test suite games like Doom 3, Far Cry, and Aquamark 3. The A8N32-SLI is faster, but at levels that are generally within the margin of error.
There is more to the story though. While we can't fully explain why it is faster, we did find the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe to be as much as 8% faster on the newest games that we tested in SLI mode, and up to a whopping 17% faster in single video mode with single/dual 7800GTX video cards. These are significant increases in performance that can't be ignored. We don't know why this is the case, and we will be testing this further as more Dual x16 boards appear in the marketplace. Perhaps it is the Asus design, perhaps it is the MCP51, and perhaps it could be anything.
Please do not let the debunking of the 40% to 50% claims that others have made for this board's performance sway your opinion of the Asus A8N32-SLI. This is one fast Socket 939 motherboard worthy of a place in any enthusiast's Athlon 64 system. The 8-phase works very well to keep the board stable and cool, the heat pipes and no fans really work, and Asus even provides optional cooling fans for those who will use water cooling with this board. If you want to build a super performance, silent PC or a water-cooled or phase-change cooled super overclocker, the A8N32-SLI will serve you well. We couldn't say anything close to this about recent Asus boards, but Asus obviously designed this board to turn some heads in the Athlon 64 market.
The Asus A8N32-SLI is also a monster overclocker, reaching the highest overclock ever with our stock CPU and to 310FSB with a reduced multiplier. If you compare this performance to our other reviews of recent Asus Socket 939 boards, you may wonder if they were produced by the same company. Asus has become serious about Athlon 64, and it shows in the design, execution and performance of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.
The A8N32-SLI is blessed with a unique and very effective design that truly works. The 8-phase design behaves gracefully under extreme loads and remains much cooler than other 3- or 4-phase designs. This yields excellent stability and headroom that we have not seen before on an Asus Socket 939 design. Asus claims that the board is up to 15°C (36°F) cooler than conventional solutions, and we saw nothing in our testing to make us doubt this claim. The board remained cool and stable under the most difficult test conditions.
In the end, we still have some reservations as to whether Dual x16 makes any difference at all in video performance. It certainly appears to improve performance greatly in the latest, greatest, and most demanding games, but we will need to dismiss other potential explanations before we become a true believer. We do not, however, have reservations about the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. This board is a definite keeper.
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Marlin1975 - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
That can not be stressed enough. I don't mind paying a couple extra bucks to get a nice VIA Envy sound or even the new C-media Dolby chip. But the ac97 realtek junk needs to die.
phusg - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Agreed. Only it's even worse: nVidia pioneered decent on-board sound with their nForce1 chipset (not nForce2).
Concillian - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
I definitely agree, and don't think this was mentioned in the 'Final Words'.With lack of PCI-e support from soundcards and many other add-in cards, it's important to minimize add-in cards, especially on an SLI setup where slots may be eaten up by coolers for the 2 video cards.
With the way this board is layed out, if you have 2 cards in SLI with big coolers you have 1 PCI and 1 x4 PCI-e slot left. If you're forced to populate the PCI slot with a soundcard you're done... seeing as how there are very few PCI-e cards out there.
I would also not be blaming nVidia... ASUS could implement a better audio solution if they wanted to (like DFI does with Karajan and MSI does with SBLive!), but they chose not to. To blame nVidia seemingly absolves ASUS of responsibility, and that's not right. The board is made by ASUS, not nVidia. Any blame for a poor audio implementation belongs to ASUS.
nVidia supposedly had little demand for soundstorm because motherboard manufacturers weren't ordering enough. At least that's the story that was fed to us. Giving specific manufacturer designs poor ratings because of crappy audio implementation is the way to get manufacturers to implement better solutions regardless of what their supplier gives them. Blaming their supplier gives them a cop out. Blaming ASUS gets them looking for innovative solutions and asking nVidia to supply them with better options integrated into future chipsets.
phusg - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Also the motherboard manufacturers complained at the high cost of the Dolby Digital Live licence (something like $5 a chipset if I remember rightly). I've always said nVidia should go have a chat with the competitors DTS. Wouldn't that be something?
DanaGoyette - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
I've been pondering this for a while:Since the nForce4 x16 northbridge uses Hypertransport to communicate with its southbridge,
and the nForce2 southbridge uses HyperTransport to communicate with its northbridge,
Shouldn't it be possible to replace or supplement the nForce4 southbridge with the nForce2 MCP-T and use its APU? Either that, or combine it with the nForce Professional MCPe?
Even better, use the nForce2 MCP-T with the GeForce 6100/6150 northbridge for integrated audio and video!
psychobriggsy - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
It all depends on whether the southbridge used (a standard nForce4 SLI) has a downstream HyperTransport link.I imagine it doesn't, therefore you have: [CPU]===[nF SP100]===[nF SLI]
I suppose you could connect an ULi PCIe southbridge to a couple of spare PCIe lanes for it's built in Azalia audio, and another bazillion SATA ports, IDE ports and USB ports, lol.
DanaGoyette - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Er, I didn't mean nForce Professional AND nf4 with the MCP-T, I meant one or the other. I wonder if it's even possible to use the NF2 southbridge like this. I believe the BIOS might take some work, but you never know until you try![CPU] - [nF Pro] - [NF2 MCP-T]
[CPU] - [SLIx16] - [NF2 MCP-T]
[CPU] - [gf6100] - [NF2 MCP-T]
yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
This board is definitely on my list to track pricing. If this thing comes down enough I'll be getting this when I build my new system instead of the older Asus SLI-Premium I was looking at.Hopefully Asus soon releases that sweet passively-cooled 7800series card (hopefully a GT) as well. It debuted in this article: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...">http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...
yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Can you mount an XP-90 on the processor without interfering with the heatpipes or MOSFETs around the socket?yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Did you guys test any of the aftermarket cooling systems like the XP90 and XP120 for clearance? That's rather important to overclockers, especially on a board like this!