*** Official ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4) Thread ***

[Thermalrock]

they should drop the pci slots and put the 1xs where they dont get blocked by video cards with double height.

 

[tretneo]

Originally posted by: Dynamix3D

Um where the hell did you get those 6800 GT PCI Express cards? I haven't seen them in stock anywhere yet. And how much did they run you?

Saw them on Ebay 2 weeks ago, A pair of them from some Etailer and I jumped on em and bid. I set my max bid to 450 each and won them at 450. I paid $925.00 Shipped. Not too bad considering they may not be available easily by the time the SLI Mobo's are released. Plus i didn't pay any tax and they were brand new and Sealed.

tret

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Newbie needs advice!

I'm building a new system using either this board or the plain SLI (non deluxe)
In looking at the spec's on ASUS's site, the difference in the two boards is the deluxe has

Dual Raid (4x nforce4 chipset and 4x silicon image contoller)
Dual Gbyte LAN

The plain SLI has just single raid 4x from the nforce chipset and single Gbyte LAN.

I will be using 2x 74gb Raptors in RAID0, my question is,
Will their be any performance difference between running my raid array on the nforce4 chipset vs. the silicon controller?

 

[jkresh]

hard to say until board is out, but running it off of the nf4 should be faster the off of the silicone image. Are you sure they have two sli motherboards and that the otherone isint just nforce4 pro instead of sli?

 

[Caveman]

Thinking about this board... I'm planning to run a 74 Gig Raptor for progrmas and an IDE for storage... I assume I should just get the vanilla SLI version... unless dula Gbyte LAN is worthwhile? What is it anyway?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Thanks Jkresh

They have both A8N-SLI
and A8N-SLI deluxe
complete with specifications and Bios download links for each?

I was not previously aware of 2 SLI boards either! Wonder if its the same board and just duplicate pages on the ASUS site?

I kinda hope there are 2 boards, as I,m not interested in dual GB lan, and can't see the need for more than 4 sata drives. If a plain SLI version is cheaper I'm interested

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Caveman

I think the dual GB lan, allows the machine to act as an internet server and share broadband access to other networked machines.
I quess it eliminates the need for a broadband router in a small home network? Do's it work with WI-FI?

Networking guru I'm not. Maybe someone will post with more info

 

[gobucks]

Personally, I'm going to buy the first of these boards that I can, so long as it's under $200. If I have to settle for the non-deluxe, then so be it. Oh, well, we'll see, I guess. Gigabyte may end up pulling a rabbit out of their hat and beating Asus to market, which they seemed in excellent position to do. As long as I don't have to go with MSI, I'll take either of the other 2.

 

[babcom]

Is there any info on the non-SLI version yet? All the other mfrs except ASUS are releasing their non-SLI versions first. The ASUS A8N-non SLI appears to be the only NF4 with passive chipset cooling.

 

[MBetz]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
The plain SLI has just single raid 4x from the nforce chipset and single Gbyte LAN.

I will be using 2x 74gb Raptors in RAID0, my question is,
Will their be any performance difference between running my raid array on the nforce4 chipset vs. the silicon controller?

At http://event.asus.com/sli/index.htm, click on the specs link at the top.
You will see that it says:

- 4*SATA 3 Gb/s and 2*ATA133 support RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD
- 4*SATA 1.5 Gb/s ...

The nforce4 controller provides the 3 Gb/s ("SATA 2.0") and the silicon image controller gives 1.5 Gb/s.
So it seems that it just depends on how much bandwidth you want to give your hard drives.

 

[Thermalrock]

http://www2.alternate.de/html/...html?artno=GHEA03&
http://www2.alternate.de/html/...html?artno=GHEA04&

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Damn! Looks like no AN8 for Christmas

AMD article on A8N delayed til late Dec or early Jan

 

[Thermalrock]

i want the ultra. dont like northbridge cooled active.

 

[Caveman]

Time for Gigabyte... I'm sick of waiting... They deserve it for being the first to bring a good board to market... The anandtech review was very flattering...

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Originally posted by: SpedeRacer
Probably a dumb question due to how much information is known but any guesses on whether or not the Thermalright XP-120/XP-90 will fit?

I emailed Thermalright a few weeks ago, about three I think...

Anyway they assured me the XP-120 WILL!!! fit

 

[gobucks]

i agree with Caveman - kudos to gigabyte, their boards (Ultra and SLI) are both fantastic. Unless Asus manages to pull a rabbit out of the hat, my next computer will have a gigabyte mobo in it.

 

[maevinj]

i dont know if i totally believe the asus mobo will be delayed b/c they have to redesign it. falcon-nw, and velocitymicro are selling systems with asus sli board. so it doesnt make sense that they are redesigning it. i guess we'll just have to wait and see

 

[anox3]

I still believe their is some type of problem with these boards. Asus has launched their high end board on their website. No launches have happened on the other sites like MSI and Gigabyte. Kind of surprising considering they were talking availability by Christmas. Whether it be with the silicon or the boards themselves. I want one of these boards soon. I am starting to lean towards waiting a month or two upon release so the obvious problems can be worked out.

 

[gobucks]

Actually, there is info on gigabyte's site on both their Ultra and SLI boards, it's just not listed under its official list of products yet. If you go to the main motherboard product page, there should be icons for the X8NXP-9 and X8NXP-SLI boards, leading you to PDF documents showing pics and specs of the mobos. There was also an announcement of MSI's Neo4 (Ultra) and Diamond (SLI) mobos on their website, but once again, no official product page.

I guess it's all speculation at this point, we won't know until we can get our hands on some boards. Still, with all the review sites recieving mobos from Asus and Gigabyte for review, they must be able to at least make some boards work, so the issue can't be too major if it exists at all.

 

[Thermalrock]

only redesign i know of is that gigabyte said they need to redesign their boards to fix the 2.8v max dimm voltage disaster.

 

[Caveman]

2.8V Dimm max is still high enought to get a nice C/C... At least with OCZ rev 2

 

[jose]

I'm wondering if you will be able to use both pci slots on the Gigabyte SLI board. Some of the 6800GT's have big fans, and that might stop someone from using both slots. ie. scsi & sound.

Regards,
Jose

 

[duane26]

Originally posted by: Caveman
2.8V Dimm max is still high enought to get a nice C/C... At least with OCZ rev 2

I don't agree that 2.8 vDimm is enough. Yes you can get a nice OC with 2.8 but for $200 + I want the bleeding edge. Not to mention that OCZ has just come out with some voltage extreme stuff that looks like fun. I have OCZ rev 2 and I wish my old mobo would support at least 2.9, only 2.7 vDimm and I won't be making that mistake again. I think I will just wait for the DFI SLI-D, which should be OC happy. In my opinion it's just better to wait for all the kinks to come out before diving into this one.

 

[runestone]

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/...jsp?ProductCode=240418
Zipzoom shows the Asus sli for pre-order. Hope the non-sli version shows soon.

 

[Thermalrock]

in my book 2.8v max is a disaster, feel free to disagree.