If you've got the money, SLI is definitely worth it. But how does it fare as an upgrade path?
ASUS and NVIDIA have been working very closely with each other on the nForce4 SLI project. NVIDIA took ASUS? A8N-SLI Deluxe on tour with them, doing demonstrations to reviewers all over the world based on this one motherboard. Obviously the partnership has irritated a few of ASUS? competitors, and thus it looks like Gigabyte and MSI are doing their best to get their competing boards out as soon as possible. But ASUS was the first to get us a final board and thus we have them in our review today. The very first A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard we received was horribly unstable and we spent the majority of our time just trying to get the thing to work. Our sample was one of 10 in the world and fortunately not a mass production sample. ASUS managed to get us another board in time for the publication of this review, and the updated board fixed all of our issues. We will be sure to do a full review on ASUS? SLI motherboard featured here, but for now here?s some brief information about the board.
The A8N-SLI Deluxe is a very interesting solution from ASUS as it will be targeted at both the high end and mainstream Socket-939 markets. With a price point of around $180, ASUS is hoping that all types of users, from casual to hardcore gamers will flock to the A8N-SLI Deluxe to either take advantage of SLI immediately or have the security of a SLI upgrade path.
The board itself is as feature filled as you could possibly imagine. Featuring 3 x 32-bit PCI, 2 PCI Express x1 and 2 PCI Express x8 slots, the board is pretty balanced when it comes to add-in card expansion.
NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
The TechReport have also thrown up their nForce4 Ultra chipset Review
The nForce4 packs a number of innovative new features, including the aforementioned PCI Express capability, a firewall-fortified Gigabit Ethernet controller with hardware acceleration, and a robust implementation of the latest Serial ATA spec, including Native Command Queuing for SCSI-like disk I/O performance under heavy loads. The question is, do all of the marketers' talking points add up to superior performance? We've tested these features, including ActiveArmour and SATA command queuing, and we have some answers.
ASUS and NVIDIA have been working very closely with each other on the nForce4 SLI project. NVIDIA took ASUS? A8N-SLI Deluxe on tour with them, doing demonstrations to reviewers all over the world based on this one motherboard. Obviously the partnership has irritated a few of ASUS? competitors, and thus it looks like Gigabyte and MSI are doing their best to get their competing boards out as soon as possible. But ASUS was the first to get us a final board and thus we have them in our review today. The very first A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard we received was horribly unstable and we spent the majority of our time just trying to get the thing to work. Our sample was one of 10 in the world and fortunately not a mass production sample. ASUS managed to get us another board in time for the publication of this review, and the updated board fixed all of our issues. We will be sure to do a full review on ASUS? SLI motherboard featured here, but for now here?s some brief information about the board.
The A8N-SLI Deluxe is a very interesting solution from ASUS as it will be targeted at both the high end and mainstream Socket-939 markets. With a price point of around $180, ASUS is hoping that all types of users, from casual to hardcore gamers will flock to the A8N-SLI Deluxe to either take advantage of SLI immediately or have the security of a SLI upgrade path.
The board itself is as feature filled as you could possibly imagine. Featuring 3 x 32-bit PCI, 2 PCI Express x1 and 2 PCI Express x8 slots, the board is pretty balanced when it comes to add-in card expansion.
NVIDIA's GeForce 6 SLI: Demolishing Performance Barriers
The TechReport have also thrown up their nForce4 Ultra chipset Review
The nForce4 packs a number of innovative new features, including the aforementioned PCI Express capability, a firewall-fortified Gigabit Ethernet controller with hardware acceleration, and a robust implementation of the latest Serial ATA spec, including Native Command Queuing for SCSI-like disk I/O performance under heavy loads. The question is, do all of the marketers' talking points add up to superior performance? We've tested these features, including ActiveArmour and SATA command queuing, and we have some answers.
