nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding
by Wesley Fink on February 28, 2005 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The Roundup
The four motherboards in this roundup represent all of the motherboards currently on the market that support SLI. This includes the three motherboards from the largest tier one manufacturers: Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. The surprise in this group is the very early DFI nForce4 SLI and Ultra boards from a tier 2 manufacturer. Why is this a surprise? Tier 1 manufacturers generally get favored treatment from chipset manufacturers because of the sheer volume of board sales that they represent. This means that they get chips first, reference designs first, and lots of manufacturer design help. Particularly in this launch, nVidia made it clear that none of the tier 2 manufacturers would get SLI chips or design assistance until after the Tier 1 launch of SLI motherboards.DFI basically went their own way in the design of their SLI and Ultra motherboards so that they could get to market when tier 1 SLI boards would arrive. This is why the DFI is unique in design and unique in the ability to mod an Ultra to SLI as we discussed in Morphing nForce4 Ultra into nForce4 SLI. You can also find a launch review of the DFI Ultra and SLI chipsets at DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers.
Other motherboards in this roundup received extensive pre-production coverage. Anand covered the MSI K8N Neo4 SLI in prototype in Taiwan. The Asus pre-production board was used as the Reference board for the nVidia SLI launch, and the Gigabyte SLI received a First Look in late November.
Since those early reviews and announcements, we have been looking for a Forum to compare actual production models of all these motherboards using consistent test procedures and benchmarks. The buzz surrounding these SLI boards, the huge sales that they are generating, and the fact that single video performs the same in nForce4 SLI and nForce4 Ultra made the SLI roundup the perfect vehicle for launching our new motherboard test suite.
All testing for the SLI roundup was performed from scratch for each of the SLI boards. We felt production models deserved a fresh new look to help you decide better which SLI board, if any, to choose for your next system.
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chucky2 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Typo on Page 20: I don't think you hit F3, it's F6.Chuck
ajmiles - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Wesley, would it be possible to get a reply to the comment #6 i wrote? ASUS worked closely with you to resolve the dual 6800 ultra issue, but they just stonewall me and everyone else regarding the overclocking at 1T issue.Perhaps if someone with some "muscle" in the hardware reviewing world were to push them for a response you could get one out of them?
Thanks, Adam Miles
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
#52 - i don't envy what you have to go through. i've had the misfortune of trying to get tech support from asus sometime ago and it was like pulling teeth.#29 - i agree. while i would love to have two 6800 ultras or GTs in SLI, the fact of the matter is i can't justify the cost. so instead i'm going with two 6600GTs. although this is apparently not a very popular choice, the fact remains that this configuration is still going to be substantially faster than my current setup using a 9700 pro and it costs about the same as my 9700 pro when i bought it.
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just noticed that the MSI board lacks additional PCIe boards, where the DFI board has an additional 1x and 4x slot. Anyones opinion on the importance of this?roostercrows - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just have to mention to my fellow anandtech members that I have an ASUS A8N-SLI board and I have been trying to get through to their "tech support" Friday and all Monday morning with absolutely no luck whatsoever! You can't even get through to anyone. So, when considering a motherboard keep this in mind. My experience with their "tech support" has been the worst you can imagine. Well...at least they weren't rude or incompetent.... they just aren't there.drewski - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
too bad the non-sli from MSI doesn't use the SB audiohttp://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m...
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Sorry page 5-11giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Heinrich,Did you configure the settings as per page 5-12 in the manual to passthrough on the decoder?
THILE - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
How did you make the Gigabyte run 4x dimms at 200mhz?I have this new motherboard GA-K8NXP-SLI and 4x of kingston hyperx pc3200 (KHX3200UlK2).
And running a new AMD athlon64 3500+ 90nm
I use SPD settings for the memmory. T2 is enabled.
Do I then force 200 mhz it just frezes.