i thought asus would have phased out their signiture gold puke color by now. that board is probably the ugliest i've seen come out of asus, it's not subtle, but bright!!!! black is a very nice color... stick with black... or go platinum silver (i miss my soyo dragon)...

the sad part in all of this is that their low cost subsidiary "asrock" offers a very tasteful blue color for their boards.

---------------------------------

This board will be excellent for when i buy a conroe though, maybe i'll wait to see what other manufacturers will be able to put out.

Reply

why does the Intel version of the 570SLI have only 20 PCIe lanes when the AMD version of the 570SLI has 28 PCIe lanes?

Reply

They are not utilizing the same chipset. The 570SLI for Intel Edition is just updated marketing language for the existing C19A+/MCP51(nForce 430).

Reply

321 max fsb? Who in their right mind would buy this mobo when the gigabyte ds3 hits speeds over 500fsb?

Reply

Because this board costs $120 or lower and has more features (SLI). Not everyone OC's their motherboard. Besides, the DS3 has questionable stability. Why would I or other non-OCers would want to pay $140+ for a board (DS3) that has less features and less stability? Also, DS3's are NOT hitting 500 fsb regularly. A fortunate few are getting 500 fsb but not everyone.

Reply

I wonder if the FSB wall (the 320-321 MHz) the mainboard run into is real or an engineering trick... Conspiracy theory, but I think that the top-end chipset might reach a much higher FSB, luring overclockers to pay a handfull of dollars for the premium chipset

Reply

quote:

---

wonder if the FSB wall (the 320-321 MHz) the mainboard run into is real or an engineering trick... Conspiracy theory, but I think that the top-end chipset might reach a much higher FSB, luring overclockers to pay a handfull of dollars for the premium chipset

---

On the previous C19A boards we hit 268FSB with a Pentium 4. We were starting at a 200FSB level. We are now starting at a 266FSB and hitting around the 320FSB level which is actually lower from the base. The Intel NVIDIA chipsets have never been good overclockers and our sample will not even post past 325FSB. We are expecting our final NF590SLI sample this week so it will be interesting if there is a cap although I doubt it.

Reply

This came up before with another article, but perhaps it needs to be said again, I wish that Anandtech would stop using charts showing comparitive FPS that don't show a full FPS axis that starts with zero.

I understand that you are trying to highlight the small differences that are being measured and that if you have a chart that uses a proper axis, starting at zero, these differenes are harder to see. However a chart with an axis starting with zero is still a better representation of the results than using a distorted graph to draw out the differences.

Essentially, all you have graphed are the differences between the different results, and if this is what you want to do that is fine. Just relabel the graph and change the axis to show this. Call it something like "Increase in FPS with Memory Speeds Faster than DDR2-663" and then have an axis that runs from 0 to 5 FPS, since that should about cover all your results.

Obviously, such a graph would not be very appealing or interesting, but it would be in better keeping with your data. And, the fact that it doesn't seem to be a very informative graph is precisely my point. Trying to dress these charts up, which really are only charts of the small differences between your results, as if they also provide a relative comparison of the different FPS with different motherboards and different memory timings, simply confounds things. You would do better to pick one or the other to represent, but not mash both together as you are doing now.

It is bad enough that these statistics are posted in such a manner that pays little heed to the kinds of variations that are involved. Magnifying tiny differences in order to make them seen more significant only compounds the problem. Without these distorted graphs a reader might more correctly conclude that the differences in the frame rates, comparing these two different motherboards while using memory running at different speeds, are essentially insignificant. And, drawing out speculative conclusions, based on the perception of any differences, is most likely just much ado about nothing.

Reply

Well, I've never been that discouraged with their axis labeling, but I could see how someone unfamiliar with the world of statistics could be misled by purported performance differences that are actually within the measurement error.

Personally, if I were the one reporting these data, I'd use <b>both</b> methods. Plot the data as you currently do - so as to highlight subtle differences, and <b>also</b> place them on a full graph (where y ranges between 0 and the maximum observed value) in an inset. That way you get a nice zoom-in on the "interesting stuff," and a smaller zoom-out to illustrate that the differences are typically minor, compared to the absolute values.

I'll also point out that, if you <i>really</i> want to get persnippity about their stats reporting, you should demand that they repeat their tests several times, and report each datum with an error bar. :)

Of course, most of my suggestions for improvement involve the word "bar."

-sheq

Reply

I feel it's important to put a lot of these results in perspective with regards to their level of significance. For me personally when looking at results I find the thing that I find most useful is percentages. Lately it seems that a lot of system variables (memory timings/frequency, cpu cache etc) often result in differences of less than 10% in most cases which to me isn't that significant when just getting 1 higher speed bin on your cpu would get you that and probably for less money than say buying the very best ram. I guess I'm saying that when I see graphs that are zoomed in to highlight minor differences I find myself thinking "ok I see why they've done that but it would be nice to be given a percentage so that I can make a quick and dirty evaluation of whether the difference is significant or not". Just some random thoughts :-)

Reply