Ok... Narrowed it down. Which one?

C

Comedian

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 15, 2005
Messages
107
Ok, I am going with an AMD 64 4000+ and cooling with a Thermalright XP120.
Starting out with a Nvidia GeForce 7800, and keeping the option open to later upgrade to 2.
The memory is still out there. Maybe you guys can help me out with that too.
Not worrying about overclocking, but its something I want to keep open.

Which motherboard should I get? (and memory)

A8N32-SLI Deluxe
A8N-SLI Premium
A8N-SLI Deluxe


This is a good chance for the ASUS advocates to help me out. ;)
 
I already have my 4400 X2, 7800GT, Ballistix 2x512 MB, PSU and case with no motherboard, I'm just waiting for the A8N32 to be released.
 
Since I have not seen benchmarks of A8N SLi versus A8N32 SLi with 7800GTXs, I can't comment on he performance aspect. But I recommend the Premium, unless the 32Deluxe also uses a NB heatpipe.

Edit: Just read a review of the 32 versus a 24, there is no performance advantage and, in fact, a performance decrease if you are running below 1600x1200 4xaa 8xaf. Most likely the slight performance hit is due to un-tweaked drivers by nvidia. As always they will get better with age. I would say that the A8N32 is a solid bet, especially since it does use the heatpipe.
 
Thanks for the comments

There is no word that the Thermalright XP120 will work with it, but the layout is very similar to the other Nforce boards, so I assume it will work.

Im anal about the way things look and sound, so I want to be able to run games so they look good.
 
I've read a few places that the Deluxe versions weren't to good. You may want to do a search on that and that the premiums were better. Personally I would choose an ABIT and hearing the Epox sli is good too. If you're good at tweaking bios and have a ton of time and experience....DFI then. I won't touch them.

MC FLMJIG
 
I'd get the Premium if I were you only because by the time the 32 gets to market and isn't price gouged, we'll all be waiting for M2 ;).

I like the DFI myself, but the newer bioses have a lot of "auto" settings that help the noobs out. Never did the old bios thing, so I don't know. It's actually been the best s939 board I've had (out of 4 or 5...can't remember :eek: ), so go figure :cool: .
 
GO ahead and get the A8N SLI Premium. It ironed out all the nasty issues that the Deluxe had and is in fact cheper right now at Newegg than the Deluxe (I believe Asus wants to rid the shelves of the Deluxe and is therefore undrpricing the premium) The 32 model is also a nice board if you can find one but why wait, the performance is the same with this generation of video cards. Maybe in two or three years the new cards will begin to use all that bandwidth but even the 7800GTX doesn't use 8X, in SLI, that is available now.

On my A8N SLI Deluxe I use 2 GB (in 2 x 1024MB config) of Corsair TWINX-2048 PC-3200 C2PT DDR400 RAM at 2/3/3/6 1T timings on an O/Ced 3500+ Newcastle (2.4 GHZ). Seems like a fairly stable config and the speeds are reasonably good for two 1GB DIMMs in DDR. I can recommend this RAM for that rig with no problem
 
My vote is Premium, mainly because of the heatpipe. I like the lack of noise that normally accompanies a Northbridge cooler.

I've got one of these and I really dig it.

Mr.Dearthian
 
I vote a8n32, because I'm going to be getting on here in about two weeks :) I don't think they will be hard to come by (hopefully) and it appears to have a decent advantage over the 8/8 sli solutions currently offered (re: HotHardware review).

If thats too pricey, then the premium....heatpipe action is nice. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top