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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Per Hansson - Sunday, November 6, 2005 - link
Hi, what type of capacitors did Asus choose to use on this mainboard?It looks like all caps are of the same type, (bar the CPU filter caps) is it Chemicon perhaps?
Klaasman - Sunday, November 6, 2005 - link
You guys at Anandtech should try cleaning the dust out of your HSF once in a while.Wesley Fink - Sunday, November 6, 2005 - link
We have received a number of emails questioning our results since some other sites who found twice the performance with Dual x16 tested with the nVidia SLI-AA option enabled with Coolbits in very recent nVidia drivers.We have complete results of SLI-AA testing with Far Cry - Regulator, the same game tested by sites claiming the 50% performance gain for Dual x16, but we no increase at all in SLI-AA performance.
ALL components except the motherboard are the same. We even moved the hard drive between the systems to make SURE everything but the motherboard remained the same. Results were the Average of two runs with the very latest 81.87 videodrivers. Memory was 2x512MB of our standard OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 at 2-2-2-7. Memory and CPU were exactly the same in both systems, and the same MSI 7800GTX cards were used for benchmarking.
nVidia SLI-AA Mode - Far Cry - Regulator Demo - 1600x1200
8X SLI-AA 16X SLI-AA
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe 37.22 20.59
DFI LANParty nF4 37.89 22.19
As you clearly see, there is NO difference with nVidia SLI-AA between Dual x8 and Dual x16. In fact the Dual x8 scores are slightly faster, but they are well within error margin and I would call them equivalent - the same.
Live - Sunday, November 6, 2005 - link
Nice to see this one cleard up. To bad you where right and they where wrong, performance wise that is.mctmcpoop - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
Cound you re-test and compare the result from different X16 bus in A8N32 ? If the X16 slot result from the NF4 chipset is lower compare to X16 from C51D , we can be sure that the C51D X16 is much faster than NF4 chipsetWesley Fink - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
This is a really good idea. The only problem is the Micro ATX boards that have this North Bridge do not normally have the memory timing options and other tweaks to allow a direct comparison. Also with an enabled integrated video on the C51 north bridge we are introducing a new variable. We will probably have to wait for other Dual x16 boards to see if we can duplicate these results on the newest, most demanding games.mctmcpoop - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
What I mean is test both of the X16 slot on A8N32 , one X16 bus should be from C51D pci express tunnel chip , the other X16 slot bus should be from the NF4 chip as other normal SLI board ... So if the right X16 slot get good score compare to left X16 slot , that means C51D chip has better design of the pci express x16 bus ...Wesley Fink - Sunday, November 6, 2005 - link
I ran some quick tests comparing the North x16 slot (nearest to CPU) and the South x16 slot on the Asus in the 3 new games that showed the big single-video increases. The South x16 slot was consistently slower than the one nearest the CPU by 2% to 6.7% in our single video performance tests. Perhaps there are difference in performance of the MCP51 and nF4 SLI which each drive one of these slots. We will look at these results again in future Dual x16 board reviews.lopri - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
Another question for Wesley:When you say OC isn't as good with SLI as with a single video card setup, is it in general? Or this particular board? Also, what's the reason for it? CPU? Chipset? Power regulation on the board?
Thanks again for a great review! I'm eagerly waiting for this board!
Wesley Fink - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
We have noticed that SLI will not overclock as high on other nForce4 boards as well, but I can't tell you the max on each one for SLI. I made this comment because I couldn't duplicate an overclock I had run earlier on this board, realized I had SLI set-up, removed the 2nd card and ran a few quick tests to see the impact of SLI on maximum overclock.