ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe - nForce 4 SLI X16 Unleashed
How we configured our test systems: When configuring the test systems for this showcase, we first entered the system BIOS and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults." We then manually configured our system RAM to run at 200MHz (DDR400), with the timings set to CL 2,2,2,5 settings. The hard drive was then formatted and Windows XP Professional (SP2) was installed. Then we installed all of the necessary drivers and removed Windows Messenger from the system altogether. Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive, and ran all of the tests. Our World Bench 5 tests were done on a completely clean install as the very first batch of each test we ran.
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| SYSTEM 1: Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz) Athlon 64 FX-57 (OC testing only) ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI X16 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2,2,2,5 GeForce 6800 GT GeForce 6800 GT x2 - SLI GeForce 7800 GTX x2 SLI-AA tests only Onboard Ethernet Onboard Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB HD 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 Forceware v77.77 Forceware v81.84 (SLI tests) nForce 4 Drivers v6.82 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM 2: Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz) MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2,2,2,5 GeForce 6800 GT GeForce 6800 GT x2 - SLI Onboard Ethernet Onboard Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB HD 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 Forceware v77.77 Forceware v81.84 (SLI tests) nForce 4 Drivers v6.82 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM 3: Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz) ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2,2,2,5 GeForce 6800 GT GeForce 6800 GT x2 - SLI GeForce 7800 GTX x2 SLI-AA tests only Onboard Ethernet Onboard Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB HD 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 Forceware v77.77 Forceware v81.84 (SLI tests) nForce 4 Drivers v6.82 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM : Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz) ASUS A8N SLI Premium NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2,2,2,5 GeForce 6800 GT GeForce 6800 GT x2 - SLI Onboard Ethernet Onboard Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB HD 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 Forceware v77.77 Forceware v81.84 (SLI tests) nForce 4 Drivers v6.82 DirectX 9.0c |
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We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2005 suite (CPU, Multimedia, and Memory). All of these tests were run with our A64 FX-53 processor set to its default clock speed of 2.4GHz (12x200MHz).
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Sandra is more of a quick sanity check for us than anything else. The results shown here are pretty much as expected for the processor we chose, as well. What's perhaps somewhat interesting and impressive are the memory scores we took at DDR400 CAS 2,2,2,5 settings with the A8N32 SLI Deluxe in excess of 6000MB/sec. This is right in line with what we've seen on the A8N SLI Premium historically, as well. Moving along to the Sandra hard disk benchmark, we see a strong 40MB/sec driven from the WD Raptor drive, which again is right on top of what we've seen in previous versions of this board with the standard nForce 4 SLI single chip solution. It seems at least as far as this base level test goes, the extra latency of having discrete north and southbridge components with the new nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset has no immediately apparent effect on performance. However, there is still a lot more testing to be done so let's move on.
