a8n-sli "premium" edition

[stickybytes]

at first i thought premium and deluxe pretty much meant the same thing as if they were interchangeable. turns out they are two different boards. what details do we know about the a8n-e "premium"?

One little piece of information can be found here: link

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Right now there are two boards

A8N-SLI

A8N-SLI deluxe

There's rumored to be a Premium yet to be released

 

[NightCrawler]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
Right now there are two boards

A8N-SLI

A8N-SLI deluxe

There's rumored to be a Premium yet to be released

A8N-E is also available but the A8N-E Premium isn't available yet.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

http://translate.google.com/translate?u...=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

Link has a picture. Very interesting, btw.

- new chipset cooling. (finally)
- no SLI card.
- apparantely more than 20 lanes of PCI-E (Pericom controller).

 

[stickybytes]

Originally posted by: ChineseDemocracyGNR
http://translate.google.com/translate?u...=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

Link has a picture. Very interesting, btw.

- new chipset cooling. (finally)
- no SLI card.
- apparantely more than 20 lanes of PCI-E (Pericom controller).

thanks for the link! the new chipset cooling solution seems very interesting. i also heard that they might try some stack-cooling i don't know exactly what it is but it's used on asus's premium intel boards.

 

[mofrack]

The lack of SLI selector of any sort is nice too... perhaps they finally figured out how to make it just an option in the bios?

 

[ohnnyj]

HardOCP has a picture as well.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Here's a press release from Pericom on the ASUS-SLI Premium - http://www.pericom.com/press/pr.php?prid=92

 

[bookman]

Hope they also included a better sound solution.

 

[mofrack]

Originally posted by: bookman
Hope they also included a better sound solution.

Doesnt look like they did. In the pic ohhnyj posted from HardOCP, the A8N SLI Premium is still sporting the ALC850 chip.

What I'm wondering is if Asus is using a newer PCB design? They might be since the SLI selector has been removed. This would mean seperate BIOS releases for this model, as well as a possibility that this Premium board might not have the 240-ish FSB at 1T limit that the Deluxe seems to have...

 

[Capt Caveman]

I know the A8N-e board is a Revision 2.0 and based on the lay-out of it, it looks like it could easily be the same PCB as the SLI premium that will be used.

 

[geogecko]

The layout of the SLI Premium looks very similar to the layout of the Deluxe, minus a few changes. The advantage, if you read the press release, of the new pericom chips, is that the SLI PCI-E lane selection uses electrical switches, instead of jumpers. This is good, because for one, they are smaller, and secondly, provide a better electrial circuit matching over having to have jumpers or PCB jumpers.

It's not clear from the press release how many PCI-E lanes are available on this board, or if it's just the same. However, in order for that 4x slot to be 4 lanes, and the 16x slot to be 16 lanes, and the 1x slot to be 1 lane, they need at least 21 PCI-E lanes, and that doesn't include if they used a lane for an ethernet connection or not. I would assume, as can be seen from ASUS's web site, that this will be a seperate BIOS from the Deluxe, especially due to having the SLI setup in the BIOS, most likely.

I assume more will be known after CeBIT.

 

[geogecko]

This sux for people that will not be changing out the stock HSF on the chipset. They used the same crappy fan that they used on all their other nForce4 motherboards... (At least, if unless they plan on changing it out before releasing it to the public.)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day2/

Look down at the motherboards section...

 

[bookman]

Does anybody have any clue when this will be released? And other than the Pericom BIOS switch, what is the difference between this and the SLI Deluxe model?

 

[stickybytes]

Originally posted by: geogecko
This sux for people that will not be changing out the stock HSF on the chipset. They used the same crappy fan that they used on all their other nForce4 motherboards... (At least, if unless they plan on changing it out before releasing it to the public.)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cebit2005/Day2/

Look down at the motherboards section...

yeh. in that picture, the a8n-sli premium is shown sporting the same exact fan that is found in the a8n-sli.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: mofrack

Originally posted by: bookman
Hope they also included a better sound solution.

Doesnt look like they did. In the pic ohhnyj posted from HardOCP, the A8N SLI Premium is still sporting the ALC850 chip.

What I'm wondering is if Asus is using a newer PCB design? They might be since the SLI selector has been removed. This would mean seperate BIOS releases for this model, as well as a possibility that this Premium board might not have the 240-ish FSB at 1T limit that the Deluxe seems to have...

The Premium will be using a different Bios. A separate bios is shown for it in the ASUS download area on their website.

 

[leedog2007]

Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like the only noticable difference will be the pci-e 4x slot, the lack of a selector card, and a new bios. I wonder what they will set the price at?

 

[Capt Caveman]

The Asus Premium's also get WIFI and supposedly an upgrade in the audio processor but some folks say not for this board.

 

[ohnnyj]

Found another good photo from CeBit of the Premium over at hexus.net.

Linkage.

And from this article over at xbitlabs it seems as though this integrated SLI selector may allow you to switch between SLI enabled/disabled in Windows. At first I thought it was merely a way to not have to manually go in and switch a card which seems to only help for the initial setup. How often do you switch to single card mode when you have an SLI system anyways? But if you can do the whole enable/disable thing would be awesome. So you could be running up to four monitors at once in SLI disabled mode (but still dual card mode), and then switch SLI on for a gaming session or two. This would make an upgrade worth it IMO.

Smore Linkage.

 

[lambchops3344]

At the time being according to an article i read many games will crash due to sli. This card allows you to disable sli in windows and play the game with a single gpu. Rather than opening up your case and switching cards just to play one game.

?We are going to release A8N-SLI Premium soon."

WHEN IS SOON! DAMN YOU ASUS! Right now i have a evga 6800 ultra pci-express and a fx-55 socket 939. There both sitting in there boxes because with my current motherboard (a7n8x-e dlx) I can only run my evga 5950 agp, and 2800+ socket A..... This release of this motherboard has delayed the entire process of building my new rig. Ive been soo close several time to buying the a8n dlx.... this better come out soon and it better be worth it.

 

[geogecko]

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050323/index.html

 

[geogecko]

Looks like we do end up getting a new HSF on the chipset after all... =)

 

[lambchops3344]

lots of great info... i wish they would have compared it to the other s939 boards... and give a freakin RELEASE DATE!

 

[mrmbmh]

Asus A8n-SLI Premium is veryy good Motherbaord...
This is a article about A8n-SLI Premium by Tomshardware:
What's you idea about this motherboard? Do I wait for this mainbaord to come?
I'm Hastener for buy my system... (Athlon 64 3500+,NVIDIA MSI NX6800 GT PCI-E,1GB Transcend DDR500 and....)
If you were me, Do you wait?

 

[mrmbmh]

i want to buy a system with A8n-SLI Deluxe...
Do I wait for A8n-SLI Premium