ASUS A8N SLI - Analyzing the Hardware
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The A8N SLI uses AMD’s socket 939 processors from the 3000+ all the way up to the X2 4800+ Dual Core processors (with a bios update). As well as supporting the Athlon FX series processors, the A8N SLI can power as fast of a CPU as you can afford. The new Athlon 64 Venice CPU’s are also supported as most boards ship with the latest bios, which supports all but dual core CPU’s.
The mosfet power source is cooled by a large passive aluminum heatsink which barely gets warm during overclocking.
The nForce 4 SLI chipset is a welcome feature which supports 3 GB/s SATA transfers and fully supports NCQ (Native Command Queuing) which will allow for higher data transfer rates surpassing the speeds of previous generation high performance SATA drives. More bandwidth will make loading of the operating system functions, applications and games faster than ever.
The nForce 4 SLI chipset is cooled by a small aluminum heatsink which is assembled with both a thermal pad and thermal paste and runs very hot as do most nvidia chipsets. The fan operates at nearly 8900 RPM, but is quiet. If you are looking at having a silent PC, this will be the loudest component.
The A8N SLI also supports Dual Channel DDR 400 memory. If you use higher than PC3200 memory, you can increase to their frequency while maintaining the same overall CPU frequency by lowering the multiplier. Overclocking PC3200 memory can be a headache. Although the A8N SLI only allows adjustments up to 3.0v to the memory, this is ample for TCCD memory modules which do not require this much voltage. The low latency BH-5 UTT memory modules that like a lot of voltage will be severely handicapped due to the lack of voltage needed to run such high latencies.
Setting up the memory at overclocked speeds, I had run into an issue with 1T timing. The board simply will not boot past 245FSB with 1T timing, which lowers memory bandwidth significantly. No matter if the memory is capable of running this speed, it simply will not run with 1T enabled. Lowering to 2T is the only way to get the board to run during overclocking.
One of the little annoying bits of this board is that the top PCI express slot is located so far up on the motherboard that longer cards will interfere with memory installation with a graphics card installed, the memory can be installed with longer cards, it’s a real close call and could cause compatibility issues with some graphics cards with ram cooling systems, or larger than normal back-plates.
One of the key features of the A8N SLI is right in the title, SLI. Users are able to run multiple graphics cards linked together to spread the graphics load onto both cards for nearly twice (1.9 times) the performance. This is good news for all of those gamers who need every last frame per second and all of the details to get the very most out of their favorite games. Simply put, games will begin looking better and more graphically intense. Users will be able to play next generation games without having to upgrade from SLI, unless they wanted to get peak performance with next generation games (it’s a vicious cycle). With SLI available, the user will have the ability to have the highest FPS at their next LAN-party.
The A8N SLI is designed with a two slot thermal design allowing for larger coolers to be installed on the card. This includes most Arctic Cooling silencer heatsinks as well as most water-cooling blocks for optimal cooling performance.
Because of current hardware limitations, I cannot provide the standard benchmarks for this board because I cannot make full use of all of the SLI features. However, this analysis should will still prove useful to those looking for detailed information on this motherboard.
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