A8N-SLI Premium Questions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Matias Silva
  • Start date Start date
Matias Silva said:
On Tom's hardware they mention that the board
supports DDR500. Is this true?

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050323/index-02.html

Also does anybodyhave any idea when the premium
board will be released?

Thanks,
Matt
Click to expand...

"Supports DDR500" means the setting is in the BIOS. The
memory controller is inside the processor, so whether
it works or not, is a function of the stepping of processor
that you buy. Some processors work better than others,
when it comes to overclocking memory. (JEDEC only
officially recognizes DDR400, so AMD doesn't have to
design the circuit to run faster than that. DDR500
is considered overclocking, and overclocking
comes with no guarantees.)

On the A8N-SLI, Wesley at Anandtech got the FSB to
run at 255MHz, and ran 2 sticks of memory in dual
channel mode at 1:1. That is just slightly more than DDR500.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&p=5

You should read that whole review, and see which company
makes the best overclocking boards. The DFI board seems
to do well, but reading accounts of that board in the
overclocking forums, you have to be very patient with
the BIOS, in order to remain in control of the board.
If you change too many settings in the DFI, it apparently
takes a lot of fiddling to get back to the level of
overclock you used to have. (If you wrote all the settings
on a scrap of paper, and just reentered all of them, it
likely would not POST.)

For more info, try private forums like:
xtremesystems.org, abxzone.com, forums.pcper.com

Paul
 
Paul said:
"Supports DDR500" means the setting is in the BIOS. The
memory controller is inside the processor, so whether
it works or not, is a function of the stepping of processor
that you buy. Some processors work better than others,
when it comes to overclocking memory. (JEDEC only
officially recognizes DDR400, so AMD doesn't have to
design the circuit to run faster than that. DDR500
is considered overclocking, and overclocking
comes with no guarantees.)

On the A8N-SLI, Wesley at Anandtech got the FSB to
run at 255MHz, and ran 2 sticks of memory in dual
channel mode at 1:1. That is just slightly more than DDR500.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&p=5

You should read that whole review, and see which company
makes the best overclocking boards. The DFI board seems
to do well, but reading accounts of that board in the
overclocking forums, you have to be very patient with
the BIOS, in order to remain in control of the board.
If you change too many settings in the DFI, it apparently
takes a lot of fiddling to get back to the level of
overclock you used to have. (If you wrote all the settings
on a scrap of paper, and just reentered all of them, it
likely would not POST.)

For more info, try private forums like:
xtremesystems.org, abxzone.com, forums.pcper.com

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks paul that was very informative. No chance on knowing
release date?

Matt
 
Premium?

There's an A8N-SLI, A8N-SLI Deluxe, and now an A8N-SLI Premium?

I just bought the Deluxe, dammit. What's the Premium got over it?
 
"Jon J. Yeager" said:
Soft switching between SLI and non-SLI?

Why would someone have 2 video cards in there and not SLI them up (unless
they're not SLI compatible)? Odds are, if you want to turn SLI on or off,
you're adding or removing a physical card at the same time, thus opening the
case anyway... right?

Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

My reaction was, how many times do you change from SLI to
non-SLI ? Soft switching is cool, but if it costs extra
money, why bother ? Anybody who spent the $$$ on two
video cards is going to use them.

Paul
 
Jon said:
Soft switching between SLI and non-SLI?

Why would someone have 2 video cards in there and not SLI them up (unless
they're not SLI compatible)? Odds are, if you want to turn SLI on or off,
you're adding or removing a physical card at the same time, thus opening the
case anyway... right?

Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

My guess is that not every graphic app takes adavantage of SLI and if you
happened to have a lot of monitors lying around, like me, and you have some
certain need, then you can turn off the SLI with software, and then reboot.
Now you are able to use all four DVI connections...

Also I think another motherboard manufacture came out with software switching.
So Asus is doing this in order to compete...

And I think??? Asus also bundled some more software with Premium

My 2 Cents...
Matt
 
Premium?

There's an A8N-SLI, A8N-SLI Deluxe, and now an A8N-SLI Premium?

I just bought the Deluxe, dammit. What's the Premium got over it?
Click to expand...

Another question. This review mentions that the A8N-SLI, presumably
all variants, has a 4-pin connector for the "CPU fan." What does that
mean? Is it a typical 4-pin molex connector like you'd use to power a
drive, or was this a mistake at Tom's Hardware?

Ron
 
Another question. This review mentions that the A8N-SLI, presumably
all variants, has a 4-pin connector for the "CPU fan." What does that
mean? Is it a typical 4-pin molex connector like you'd use to power a
drive, or was this a mistake at Tom's Hardware?

Ron
Click to expand...

You can download the manual now. I found it on ftp.asuscom.de

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/HANDBUCH/Motherboard/Socket_939/NVIDIA_Chipset/a8n-sli_premium_e1952.pdf

There are five fan headers, one intended for the Northbridge
fan, and the other four (CPU, PWR, CHA1, CHA2) for end user
use. All of those fans are the traditional 3 pin variety.

There are three power connectors. The main power is via a
24 pin EATX power connector. Processor power comes through
a 2x2 ATX 12V connector. And the final power connector, is a
disk drive connector that plugs into the motherboard
next to the video cards - the so-called EZ-Plug. The
1x4 disk drive connector used for EZ-Plug, gives cleaner
+5V and +12V, in the vicinity of the PCI-Express x16 edge
card power pins.

Since a PCI Express slot is allowed to use 75 watts, and
there are two video cards, the EZ-Plug makes sure there is
a path for the 150 watts to travel.

In terms of power supplies, there are very few _qualified_
power supplies for powering a maxed out hardware config. The
PC&P 550W SLI power supply is one of them. Certainly you
can use some of the other monsters in the field - Enermax
has a couple of supplies, and OCZ has a supply as well - but
they may not be suited to running the board with two of
the highest performance cards. Maybe you would only notice
this, if your rig crashed while gaming, a couple times a
night. The bottom of this page has some recommendations:

http://www.slizone.com/content/slizone/build.html

If, on the other hand, you only stick a single low end
PCI-Express card in the board, you might be able to get away
with running it on a well designed 350W supply, with only
a 20 pin ATX power connector. Page 52 of the downloadable
Premium manual, explains the power requirement, without
going into which brands of supplies are appropriate.

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul said:
My reaction was, how many times do you change from SLI to
non-SLI ? Soft switching is cool, but if it costs extra
money, why bother ? Anybody who spent the $$$ on two
video cards is going to use them.
Click to expand...

You have to reboot twice too. I know how much I hate rebooting...
 
Matias said:
My guess is that not every graphic app takes adavantage of SLI and if you
happened to have a lot of monitors lying around, like me, and you have some
certain need, then you can turn off the SLI with software, and then reboot.
Now you are able to use all four DVI connections...
Click to expand...

There is no need to mess with the PCI Express SLI mode for this though,
one can just disable SLI in the driver and reboot.
 
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