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Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe: NVIDIA Dual x16 for the Athlon 64

 by Wesley Fink on November 6, 2005 9:00 AM EST
95 Comments | Add A Comment
95 Comments
Graphics Performance and Encoding

3DMark03 Performance

3DMark05 Performance

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Ch. 9

It was not really surprising that the Asus A8N32-SLI topped the results for both 3DMark2003 and the most recent 3DMark2005. This was true for both single video and SLI. However, using the latest drivers on the dual x8 DFI kept results much closer than you might expect. The Asus was only 0.75% to 0.9% faster in 3DMark03, and 1.0% to 2.0% in 3DMark05. These differences are all much smaller than the margin of error on these tests, and the differences are not significant.

Media Encoding was among the best that we have tested on a Socket 939 board, but the entire range of test results is so tightly clustered, it would be a mistake to attribute any significance to this encoding score.

Certainly, 3D Graphics benchmarks and Encoding show no real difference in performance from the Dual x8 design to the latest Dual x16.

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  • Zebo - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    LOL

  • Live - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    The Techreport writes about overclocking with AMD Cool'n'Quiet here:

    They highlight two important bios options:

    quote:
    You can specify the amount that you want to overvolt the processor as a percentage, and the motherboard will supply that much extra voltage consistently as Cool'n'Quiet slides the CPU voltage up and down through its range of possible values.


    and with regards to memory overclocking:

    quote:
    …because C'n'Q will ramp the processor up to its highest possible multiplier as soon as the system's under load. On my X2 3800+, that would result in a 2.8GHz clock speed and a very nasty crash. The DFI BIOS, however, allows the user to specify a maximum CPU multiplier value for Cool'n'Quiet, neatly solving that problem.


    Does this board have these options in bios?

    As Techreport writes:
    quote:
    I think they should become a practical requirement for an enthusiast motherboard's BIOS.


    I must say I agree.

    Link: http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/damagebox/index.x...">http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/damagebox/index.x...

  • DieLate - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link

    Can we get some official info on these questions?
    They're high on my list of features. I was all set to go with the DFI until I saw this review. These features may win me over if the ASUS has them too.

  • Live - Monday, November 7, 2005 - link

    It looks like official reply is not going to happen. does anyone know if the Asus A8N SLI;Delux;Premium has this in later bios? If so I would bet this one has it aswell.

  • Capt Caveman - Monday, November 7, 2005 - link

    The latest bios for the Asus A8N-Sli Premium came out yesterday and no, it does not have this feature so I doubt the A8N32-Sli Deluxe will have this feature. Not very many overclocker's use CNQ, so I don't think there's a huge demand for this feature unfortunately.

  • WobbleWobble - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    I wonder if it's better than the DFI because of the PEG mode Asus implements on its motherboards, which overclocks the videocard.

  • Wesley Fink - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    And I disabled "PEG link" mode for our review. Asus has settings in PEG for Auto, Normal, Fast, Faster, and Disabled. We set "Disabled" because we know this trick. Asus suggests using "Faster" for review tests. On the positive side you have that additional performance waiting to be tapped.

    We also turn off the overclocks that are enabled when many boards arrive for review. That's the first thing we check.

  • psychobriggsy - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    Really nice to see such diligence!

  • Capt Caveman - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    Not by 17%

  • lopri - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link

    Also, if you're running SLI with 2 dual-slot video cards, where are you supposed to put a sound card, or any PCI card? It seems like the only slot available will be, if it's possible at all, the one above the 2nd video card. Not sure how anyone's gonna be able to use any PCI card with SLI.

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