Hybrid vs Native Dual X16 SLI: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus vs Abit IN9 32X-MAX

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for the following set of benchmarks, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults." We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for DDR2-800 at 4,4,4,12 1T latency.  The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional SP2 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary for our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then 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 drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems Intel Inside

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2007 Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2007 suite (CPU, Multimedia, and Memory) with the Abit IN9 32X-MAX, ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus and our Core 2 Duo E6400 processor. All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default clock speed of 2.13GHz.

P5N32-E SLI Plus CPU Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz

P5N32-E SLI Plus MM Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz

P5N32-E SLI Plus Memory Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz / DDR2-800

IN9 32X-MAX CPU Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz

IN9 32X-MAX MM Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz

IN9 32X-MAX Memory Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz / DDR2-800

ASUS' hybrid chipset starts well as the P5N32-E SLI Plus barely edges out the IN9 32X-MAX in all three tests. The two boards post nearly identical scores in every test except for memory bandwidth, where the P5N32-E SLI Plus pulled ahead with a nearly 10% lead.