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A8N SLI decision

D

Doorbasher

n00b
Joined
Mar 30, 2006
Messages
32
I'm looking to lay my hands on an SLI motherboard, and I'm leaning towards an A8N series. But I'm confused about all the different models. The "vanilla" one is only $106 at the egg, the duluxe and premium are in the mid 100s, and the 32x version is over 200 (read: out of the question.)

But other than the missing LAN port on the vanilla model, and the addition of extra SATA ports and fancy chipset cooling in the higher-up models, what's the difference? Do those things alone account for the $40-$50 price differences?
 
the differences are pretty much what you see.the other boards have the additional 4 sata 2 headers for running a total of 8 sata hard drives,and of course the extra lan port.if you dont need 8 ports and only need 4 then the base sli board is fine.the premium has the heatpipe cooling and more space between the sli video slots.the a8n sli32x has 2 sli ports that run at 16x each slot instead of running x8 for both in sli mode,in non sli mode the top slot runs x16 and the lower slot runs x2.the performance between all these boards are pretty much equal.the sli 32x is more for future proofing if you keep the board long enough for the game designers to fully utilize the x16 technology.most say by then the board will be obsolete.the a8n sli for 106.00 is a great deal.its a good board.ive built 3 systems using that board,it o/clocks well and has a good layout and mature bios.the difference rite now between sli x8 vs sli x16 is next to nothing.it will be several years before this will be utilized and by that time a new board will probubly be in order.basically if you dont need 8 sata2 ports and dont really want sli 32x[2x16]vs[2x8] the base board is all you need.the other difference is on the premium has a little more space between sli slots and you can change between sli and non sli in bios without having to change a card on the motherboard.but haw often are you going to change between sli and non sli so its not a dealbreaker.if you decide to go for the base a8n sli know that its a great board and will do just about what all the other boards will do just as fast,its just spacing ,more sata headers and heatpipe cooling vs fan cooling.i prefer the fan cooling as they seem to run cooler than the heatpipe setups.the other board that intrests me is the biostar tforce sli board for about 110.00.its a good board also but asus is well known foe putting out a stable ,quality product with frequent bios upgrades.
 
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