Anandtech tester Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe

[Betroz]

Akkurat slik jeg trodde for lenge siden, så viser det seg at Asus sitt nye flaggskip, A8N32-SLI Deluxe, er ett skikkelig godt hovedkort! DFI klarer fortsatt høyst HTT, men jevnt over så tviler jeg ikke på at Asus kortet er ett bedre valg.

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.

 

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 C51, 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.

 

Les testen selv hos Anandtech

[Daytona*]

Når kan vi forvente dette til salgs i norge?

Jeg fant det ut ubekreftet 18 nov der disse selges.

Endret 5. november 2005 av Daytona*

[Juke]

I omtalen står det

 

In single video card mode, we were completely surprised to find performance increases on the Asus as high as 17.3%. This is an even higher performance increase than SLI mode, but in this case, both the DFI and Asus are running a single card in x16 mode. How is this possible? We re-ran benches several times and attained the same results. It is also interesting that while there is almost no increase in single mode in "older" games, the newest and most demanding titles show the biggest increases.

 

Som de selv skriver: Hvordan er dette mulig? Noen som vet om noen andre tester som bekrefter disse vanvittige hastighetsøkningene med bare ett skjermkort i nyere spill?

[Din_Laban]

Stemmer dette, går DFI kortet rett i søpla...

[Juke]

Ja, jeg må innrømme at jeg er veldig skeptisk, siden disse resultatene er litt VEL fantastiske. Hadde derfor vært fint å få dem bekreftet fra et annet nettsted før jeg går til innkjøp av et slikt kort, da dette kortet er forholdsvis dyrt.

 

Jeg trenger i utgangspunktet ikke et hovedkort med støtte for SLI siden jeg tviler sterkt på at jeg kommer til å bygge inn to skjermkort i PCen uansett, men hvis dette hovedkortet yter såpass mye bedre enn samtlige av konkurrentene selv med bare ETT skjermkort montert, blir jeg jo nærmest nødt til å kjøpe det uansett.

[endrebjo]

Som de selv skriver: Hvordan er dette mulig? Noen som vet om noen andre tester som bekrefter disse vanvittige hastighetsøkningene med bare ett skjermkort i nyere spill?

5111245[/snapback]

Er det ikke driveren som gjør dette?

[Juke]

Er det ikke driveren som gjør dette?

Tenker du på skjermkortdriverne? De bruker vel samme driver til skjermkortet i de forskjellige testene vil jeg tro. Spesifikt tenker jeg f.eks. på benchmarken på side 10 i omtalen, hvor de i spillene Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, F.E.A.R og Quake IV får en voldsomt forbedring i ytelse med A8N32 ved bruk av kun 1 stk GeForce 7800GTX med versjon 81.85 av Nvidiadriveren (de bruker samme skjermkort og skjermkortdriver på begge kortene).

Endret 7. november 2005 av Juke

[Betroz]

Ahh folk bare fokuserer på ytelsen. La meg minne dere på noe :

Null støy og 310 HTT...trenger jeg si mer

[endrebjo]

Her er det en skrivefeil ute og går.

 

Ellers sikter kanskje Juke til denne, denne og denne. Her yter jo A8N32 ganske så mye bedre enn DFI nF4, og begge har kun ett skjermkort.

 

Vi ser samtidig at nVidia har optimalisert den nye driveren for noen spill, mens noen andre ikke.

 

Men vi ser også at singel-kort-ytelsen har blitt forbedret i den nye driveren i alle testene.

[adnan]

Så med denne testen ser vi at ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe yter bedre en DFI både på klokking og på ytelses siden. Hmm ble usikker om jeg skal kjøpe DFI nå lenger