ASUS A8n-e Premium NForce 4

[flexy]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
will someone please tell all of the NForce mobo manufacturers to HURRY UP FOR CHRISTS SAKES. Thanks.

to hurry up for christ sakes and NOT releasing boards with the faulty a01 and a02 revisions. I REALLY hope the delay at least results in the the boards being rev03 where the 1gig HT and pci-e has no bugs !

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: icepik
No external serial port on this motherboard. Interesting.

legacy = gone

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: gate1975mlm
How do you know there is no external serial port?

because in the picture, there is no external serial port.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Their Intel "Premium" board has the same rear panel and the board has a bracket for one serial port.

 

[stelleg151]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: stelleg151
will someone please tell all of the NForce mobo manufacturers to HURRY UP FOR CHRISTS SAKES. Thanks.

to hurry up for christ sakes and NOT releasing boards with the faulty a01 and a02 revisions. I REALLY hope the delay at least results in the the boards being rev03 where the 1gig HT and pci-e has no bugs !

yeah youre right, but I really want to get my hands on one in time for HL2, look at my sig for gods sake.

 

[gobucks]

stelleg 151, you think that's bad, try this on for size -
Athlon 700MHz SLOT A!!!
Unsure of mobo (got it from gateway)
Geforce 256 - yeah, the original, not even the DDR version
384MB PC100 SDRAM
27GB hard drive

Oh, yeah, I regain the lead for most ghetto PC, can somebody top that? (Your BEST PC, not your backup)

 

[Thermalrock]

my mom runs a p3-600 with a matrox millenium I i think. she does have a 21" eizo tft tho. my dad doesnt allow crts in his house anymore so replaced all of them. which resulted in me getting his 21" eizo crt. he just drove it to my place some day. was nice. i dont like tfts either cuz i dont like the image quality so this was very good for me. my mom too before that she had a crappy 17".

 

[Momental]

Can I ask a question? In all seriousness, why hold out for either the nForce4 or K8T890 boards? Yes, PCI-Express. I understand this, but if there's little to no performance gain going from AGP to PCI-e (exclusive of SLI), then why wait for it?

I ask this because, like the rest of you, I'm in a "Man! I really need to overhaul my system or just plain ol' build a new one!" situation too. However, every time I feel like I know what to get, I read yet another "road map update" or whatever, that convinces me to hold off.

These new boards seem tasty enough, don't get me wrong, but would we be left out in the cold, so to speak, if we were to bite the bullet, grab a nice nForce3-based MoBo and a juicy AGP graphics card?

Don't get me wrong. If the ASUS nForce4 board suddenly appeared in plentiful portions at the 'Egg, then I'd be all over it like two dogs wrestlin' for the last Milkbone. But how much longer are we willing to wait and at what REAL benefit? Even if the new chipsets from VIA and nVidia find their way onto boards in the next, what, 6 to 8 weeks? How long before the bugs get worked out, new BIOS'es get released before it can be said they are "solid" MoBo's? Realistically, that' prolly more like next March or April ('05). Then, we could dump our nForce3 or K8T800 boards and voila! By then, the latest iterations from ATi and Nvidia (R5xx & NV5x) will be ready n' waitin' to be slapped onto the NOW solidly-performing boards! Ya with me? Am I talkin' outta my arse here?

To quote Mugatu in 'Zoolander': "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!!" The waiting is driving me to the brink of unfathomable madness. Well, not that bad, but it does suck.

Oh, by the way, HI!!

 

[Mem]

Can I ask a question? In all seriousness, why hold out for either the nForce4 or K8T890 boards? Yes, PCI-Express. I understand this, but if there's little to no performance gain going from AGP to PCI-e (exclusive of SLI), then why wait for it?

More choices, AMD are also cutting AMD CPU prices soon,link, ,PCI Express is one reason why people are waiting,at the moment there`s not much difference speed wise,but if you`ve a PCI Express board you know the upgradeability will be better in the long run.

I`m waiting,the reason being I want PCI Express and AMD price cuts,plus better selection of motherboards to choose from.

 

[Momental]

Agreed. The upgradability issue is the largest driving factor, for me anyway. However, walking passed an EB Games with the Doom3 and Half-life 2 boxes displayed is gonna be a painful experience knowing that it'll take several more months before I see them on my screen. But, then again, I look at it like, the games aren't going anywhere and I've waited this long (well over a year) to upgrade, so what's another 3 to 4 months?

I might, however, take advantage of AMD's price cut and go ahead and buy the processor and have it ready to go for when one of the next gen boards (nForce4 or K8T890) makes its appearance. Good call on that article! :thumbsup:

I just wish we had some magic crystal ball that gave us some indication of just how long of a wait we're really talkin' here!!

 

[Ahill]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: stelleg151
will someone please tell all of the NForce mobo manufacturers to HURRY UP FOR CHRISTS SAKES. Thanks.

to hurry up for christ sakes and NOT releasing boards with the faulty a01 and a02 revisions. I REALLY hope the delay at least results in the the boards being rev03 where the 1gig HT and pci-e has no bugs !

When they release these will we be able to tell what revision it is? I would hate to buy one and find out it does not have the 1ghz HT.

Anyone?

 

[JClimbs]

LOL! Je vous trompe!

AMD K6-2 500
FIC 503+ SUPER 7
128 MB PC100 SDRAM (tried 256, she gets unstable)
20GB Maxtor HDD
TNT2 Viper 770 32MB AGP 2/4x card
OK, I went wild and bought a 40x CD-r/RW Drive a year or two ago.

Donations toward an improved ghetto PC would be gladly accepted....

 

[JMoore]

Originally posted by: gobucks
stelleg 151, you think that's bad, try this on for size -
Athlon 700MHz SLOT A!!!
Unsure of mobo (got it from gateway)
Geforce 256 - yeah, the original, not even the DDR version
384MB PC100 SDRAM
27GB hard drive

Oh, yeah, I regain the lead for most ghetto PC, can somebody top that? (Your BEST PC, not your backup)

got u beat right now intel i use a Comcrap intel celeron processor running at 800 mhz w/ integrated video. I rlly need a new comp :/

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: JClimbs
LOL! Je vous trompe!

AMD K6-2 500
FIC 503+ SUPER 7
128 MB PC100 SDRAM (tried 256, she gets unstable)
20GB Maxtor HDD
TNT2 Viper 770 32MB AGP 2/4x card
OK, I went wild and bought a 40x CD-r/RW Drive a year or two ago.

Donations toward an improved ghetto PC would be gladly accepted....

OMG....FIC 503+ ..... MEMORIES, MEMORIES Was a good board, tho

 

[bap4201]

Has anyone heard when this board is to be availabe. I heard next week? Anyone have a clue?

 

[gobucks]

Originally posted by: Momental
Can I ask a question? In all seriousness, why hold out for either the nForce4 or K8T890 boards? Yes, PCI-Express. I understand this, but if there's little to no performance gain going from AGP to PCI-e (exclusive of SLI), then why wait for it?

I agree, there is no performance gain right now for PCIe. However, you are looking at this only from one angle. It's not about the performance, it's about the platform, and a PCIe S939 system is a good platform that will last for a pretty long time, probably something like Socket A. Sure, right now, PCIe supply is rather short, but nVidia and ATI have been changing that with their latest releases, and fully intend to focus on PCIe from now on, while AGP will be taking a back seat. Computer sellers like Dell and Gateway are also encouraging this, since most of their new systems, even ones with integrated video, have PCIe, so there will be a big market base pretty soon, without consumers even knowing it. In a year or 2, when you want to upgrade, you'll be able to get a pretty nice upgrade for your CPU, (imagine going from a 3000+ to a 4400+, or even a dual core), but if you have an AGP system, your selections will look much like PCI selections now. It's just not a good situation. Plus, by the time you upgrade, graphics cards will be optimized to take advantage of PCIe's advanced upstream bandwidth, enabling larger, less used textures to be stored in main memory, and fetched without too much delay, so cards will run faster on PCIe eventually, much like AGP cards eventually became much faster than PCI ones. Also, SLI, if that's your thing, does provide a nice upgrade path, or disgusting performance now, depending on how you use it. The other main advantage of PCIe is not for graphics, but for peripherals. PCI is too damn slow - you have 133MB/s bandwidth TOTAL, which can easily be saturated by just a simple SATA controller. PCIe has almost double that FOR EACH lane, meaning you can have several high speed peripherals on your system later down the road, like HD Sound cards, 10GB Ethernet, 802.11n and higher wireless, HD Video capture, future specifications of USB and firewire, etc. These will all be impossible on handle on PCI, so you will miss out on a whole generation of peripherals.

Other than PCIe, there are several other features of next-gen chipsets that are worthwhile. nForce4 Ultra and SLI support SATA-II, which will allow for faster hard drives, and can handle current NCQ hard drives for a bit of a speed boost. They also have a hardware firewall/gigabit ethernet combo that allows for high speeds while moving the CPU load off to the chipset hardware, speeding up your system. The K8T890 Pro lacks these things, but does have HD-Audio built in, and has an NCQ SATA-1 controller.

 

[everman]

-1x PCI-Express 16x (2.5GHz, 4Go/s bidirectional)
-3x PCI-Express 1x (2.5GHz, 250MB/s bidirectional)
-3x NCV 32bit (33MHz, 132Mo/s)

So this will only support one PCI-E video card then? If that's true, I really don't see a need for the 3 1x slots because it is my belief that by the time you can actually fill them, you will probably have a new mobo. Or am I wrong in making that assumption?

 

[sylversock]

Honestly, I cannot believe AMD and Nvidia are doing this to themselves when who knows how many people want to upgrade to AMD and PCIe (including me). This is the only reason why I even considered Intel... but if I choose them I have to upgrade later for 64bit, if I choose AMD I have to upgrade later for DDR2 and PCIe... wtf? When on earth are these boards coming out, and why aren't they out sooner? How can Nvidia have such a brilliant produce (6600GT) and not want to get it out to the majority of gamers ASAP!

 

[Opticalsky]

The second week of November according to Asus is when it's gonna be on shelves, my source is tomshardware.

 

[SkyBum]

According to a rep at New Egg, the Gigabyte, Asus, and MSI will hit retail first. He seemed to think that the first boards will not be available until the end of the month.

 

[t0mm]

an asus europe rep told me, the a8n-e premium should be available in mid-december, followed by a8n-e sli and a8n-e sli deluxe.
damn can't stand the wait... i hope the first boards are not too bugged.

 

[gobucks]

I've heard a lot of people saying mid-november, but I guess that would be now, wouldn't it. Hopefully that means this week! We'll see, I guess. Oh, yeah, Gigabyte announced their new board the other day, and sent a board to anandtech to be reviewed. It's freakin awesome, so it's worth the wait. About a 5% speed advantage over nforce3, k8T800 Pro, and nforce4 reference, which is pretty impressive considering the lack of a memory controller, and the feature set is outstanding. Those boards are supposed to be hitting shelves this week or next.

Sylversock seems to hit on what a lot of us have been thinking, though - nvidia is clearly doing things backwards. The best $200 card ever, the 6600GT, is sitting on shelves uselessly because most of the people who want them are waiting for nforce4, while those AGPers are stuck buying a 9800 Pro instead. Now, when the nforce4 boards are about to hit, they are releasing an AGP version of the 6600GT. WTF?!?! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! The only explanation I can think of is this - Obviously the A1 silicon was screwed up, and the A2 was only fit for the vanilla nforce4 version, so they had to wait for A3 to release production boards. This backed up production considerably, so they had to keep producing AGP chipsets, while letting 6600GTs sit around. Now, with nfoce4 about to hit, maybe they thought they could release the 6600GT on AGP to suck up the sales of nforce3 boards from those too impatient to wait, rather than having to sell them at a discount after nforce4 hits and nobody wants the nforce3. It's just a theory, but it kinda makes some sense if you think about it.

 

[HiroProt]

Originally posted by: gobucks
Those boards are supposed to be hitting shelves this week or next.

Are you sure? That would be awesome. Where did you get the info?

 

[SkyBum]

Don't hold your breath......

 

[stelleg151]

Originally posted by: Opticalsky
The second week of November according to Asus is when it's gonna be on shelves, my source is tomshardware.

Goodness I hope its soon. I have everything ready for it. The wait is killing me.