Asus P5N32-SLI: Dual x16 - What Dreams Are Made On . . .
by Gary Key on October 27, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe is outstanding and deserves serious consideration if you are an Intel enthusiast. It is hard to quantify this statement, but after spending considerable time with this board, it is truly a cut above most other boards in both quality and performance. The board is obviously targeted at the Intel gaming enthusiast, but it should not be dismissed as an everyday solution for people who are able to afford its $210 price tag.
The exclusive 8-phase voltage regulator power design is a must-have feature and is one of the main reasons why this board performs so well at overclocked settings. While I had initial doubts about the fanless heat pipe design based upon previous experiences, the design that Asus installed on this board has guaranteed that I will be looking for this type of cooling system in future boards. Asus also implemented their unique Stack Cool 2 that involves a special design on the printed circuit board that dissipates heat from the board components.
With that said, let's move on to our opinions of this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer, looking for SLI or not, this is the board for you. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation and with the 81.85 drivers, it will provide you with significant performance enhancements over the x8 products at higher resolutions or when utilizing SLI-AA settings.
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 Poker Games, 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 available alternatives.
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 recent boards, we would like to see the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) as an option. The inclusion of an external SATA II port is beneficial for external storage solutions and supports up to 16 devices with port-multiplier functions.
In the performance area, this board was constantly at the top in all categories. The board is extremely balanced and will run all tested applications at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe the performance of this board to be outstanding and definitely showcases the ability of Asus's engineering efforts in the Intel market space.
Like Prospero, I think that I have found what dreams are made on.
Status Update - 0047 Bios used for Testing
The 0047 bios used for our testing was never publicly released by Asus for this board. Our test findings were based upon this bios and have not been replicated with the 0308 bios as of this writing.
The Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe is outstanding and deserves serious consideration if you are an Intel enthusiast. It is hard to quantify this statement, but after spending considerable time with this board, it is truly a cut above most other boards in both quality and performance. The board is obviously targeted at the Intel gaming enthusiast, but it should not be dismissed as an everyday solution for people who are able to afford its $210 price tag.
The exclusive 8-phase voltage regulator power design is a must-have feature and is one of the main reasons why this board performs so well at overclocked settings. While I had initial doubts about the fanless heat pipe design based upon previous experiences, the design that Asus installed on this board has guaranteed that I will be looking for this type of cooling system in future boards. Asus also implemented their unique Stack Cool 2 that involves a special design on the printed circuit board that dissipates heat from the board components.
With that said, let's move on to our opinions of this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer, looking for SLI or not, this is the board for you. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation and with the 81.85 drivers, it will provide you with significant performance enhancements over the x8 products at higher resolutions or when utilizing SLI-AA settings.
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 Poker Games, 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 available alternatives.
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 recent boards, we would like to see the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) as an option. The inclusion of an external SATA II port is beneficial for external storage solutions and supports up to 16 devices with port-multiplier functions.
In the performance area, this board was constantly at the top in all categories. The board is extremely balanced and will run all tested applications at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe the performance of this board to be outstanding and definitely showcases the ability of Asus's engineering efforts in the Intel market space.
Like Prospero, I think that I have found what dreams are made on.
Status Update - 0047 Bios used for Testing
The 0047 bios used for our testing was never publicly released by Asus for this board. Our test findings were based upon this bios and have not been replicated with the 0308 bios as of this writing.
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Gary Key - Thursday, November 3, 2005 - link
Please email me and I will forward a picture of the remaining inductors without the heatsinks attached. There are eight of them and the picture is high-res so you can make out the various numbers.danidentity - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Does Anandtech plan on reviewing the AMD version of this board? The A8N32-SLI Deluxe?Gary Key - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Yes, Wesley will have it completed shortly.Tanclearas - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I look forward to that, particularly compared to the A8N-SLI Premium. I find it highly dubious that x16 SLI shows such noticeable improvements over x8 SLI. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am definitely skeptical. I would guess there is something else going on between those two boards.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Please note that I stated in the article- and -We found anywhere from a 3% to almost 11% difference between the x8SLi and x16SLI configurations with the first 3% coming from differences between the two respective board suppliers and the additional 7~8% coming from the additional bandwidth/optimizations at the higher resolutions between the two boards. The driver set utilized (81.85), video cards (7800GTX), applications (GPU intensive F.E.A.R.), driver settings (AA/AF on), and cpu combination account for the difference. We will have additional information on this in future articles including different game benchmarks were the differences are not as great but the base improvement still exists. There is a true base difference between the two configurations (could vary by board design) with the 81.85 driver set accounting for the majority of the difference after this initial improvement.
Tanclearas - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
No need to get defensive. I just think that a single comparison of two boards (from two different manufacturers) does not make a conclusive argument for those improvements being from x16 vs x8 SLI configurations. If the tests show the same pattern for the A8N-SLI Premium and A8N32-SLI, then I will start to believe that the additional PCIe bandwidth is indeed what is behind the increases. Right now, we have a sample of one, which should never be the basis of a conclusion.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I am not getting defensive and did not mean for the message to come across that way. I had clearly stated that several factors played into the equation and I agree the additional bandwidth is only part of the equation. However, the same base advantage held true over the MSI P4N with the Gigabyte Quad board with the 78.01 drivers and in SLI operations with the 81.84 and 81.85 beta drivers. I agree about testing x8sli against x16sli from the same manufacturer but in this case the x8sli board would have been the P5ND2-SLI Deluxe which had severe issues in several areas. In this example the argument would have made that testing any another x8sli board would have been more beneficial for results. ;->breetai72 - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Are the benchmarks used for comparison from old reviews or did you rerun the tests again for this review? If so, the results aren't worth comparing to given what you said about difference in drivers, etc.I find it very hard to believe that any graphics setup is exceeding the bandwidth of a x8 slot. The private pixel bus handles most of the traffic anyway.
Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I reran all of the benchmarks for this article and also standardized on DDR2-667 at 3-2-2-8-1T as stated on the Test Setup page. There was no difference in numbers between the beta 81.85 and whql 81.85 drivers we used for the article. The 7800GTX SLI setup has the ability to exceed the x8 slot capacity and this is shown in the base benchmarks. I am sure the next article to be published will further show the differences between x8sli and x16sli. ;-) However, I will state once again that the main increases will come from the 81.85 drivers, certain GPU intensive games, 7800GTX SLI setup, additional AA/AF settings, and higher resolutions.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Should be- "different game benchmarks where the differences". I hit the enter button accidently before checking my spelling.