Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe: NVIDIA Dual x16 for the Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on November 6, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Memory Stress Testing
The Asus easily handled 2-2-2-7-1T timings at stock speed, as do almost any of the current boards for AMD Socket 939 from NVIDIA, SiS, VIA, and ULi. The board was completely stable at "Auto" voltage or the lowest "2.6V" memory voltage setting.
*7T was determined by MemTest86 benchmarks to deliver the widest bandwidth with the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset. While the board would operate at tRAS of 5T or lower, all benchmarks were run at 7T for best performance.
Tests with all four DIMM slots populated on the A8N32-SLI required a 2T Command Rate with 4 DIMMs in two dual channels. The 2-2-2-7 timings were still completely stable at minimum voltage. This is the pattern seen on every other top-performing Socket 939 board, except the recently tested ATI RDX200. The DFI ATI can actually defy the laws of AMD and run 4 DS DIMMs at a 1T Command Rate to about DDR405. The performance of the Asus is completely competitive with other top-line NVIDIA chipset motherboards for Socket 939.
The Asus easily handled 2-2-2-7-1T timings at stock speed, as do almost any of the current boards for AMD Socket 939 from NVIDIA, SiS, VIA, and ULi. The board was completely stable at "Auto" voltage or the lowest "2.6V" memory voltage setting.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
Tests with all four DIMM slots populated on the A8N32-SLI required a 2T Command Rate with 4 DIMMs in two dual channels. The 2-2-2-7 timings were still completely stable at minimum voltage. This is the pattern seen on every other top-performing Socket 939 board, except the recently tested ATI RDX200. The DFI ATI can actually defy the laws of AMD and run 4 DS DIMMs at a 1T Command Rate to about DDR405. The performance of the Asus is completely competitive with other top-line NVIDIA chipset motherboards for Socket 939.
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Marlin1975 - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
That can not be stressed enough. I don't mind paying a couple extra bucks to get a nice VIA Envy sound or even the new C-media Dolby chip. But the ac97 realtek junk needs to die.
phusg - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Agreed. Only it's even worse: nVidia pioneered decent on-board sound with their nForce1 chipset (not nForce2).
Concillian - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
I definitely agree, and don't think this was mentioned in the 'Final Words'.With lack of PCI-e support from soundcards and many other add-in cards, it's important to minimize add-in cards, especially on an SLI setup where slots may be eaten up by coolers for the 2 video cards.
With the way this board is layed out, if you have 2 cards in SLI with big coolers you have 1 PCI and 1 x4 PCI-e slot left. If you're forced to populate the PCI slot with a soundcard you're done... seeing as how there are very few PCI-e cards out there.
I would also not be blaming nVidia... ASUS could implement a better audio solution if they wanted to (like DFI does with Karajan and MSI does with SBLive!), but they chose not to. To blame nVidia seemingly absolves ASUS of responsibility, and that's not right. The board is made by ASUS, not nVidia. Any blame for a poor audio implementation belongs to ASUS.
nVidia supposedly had little demand for soundstorm because motherboard manufacturers weren't ordering enough. At least that's the story that was fed to us. Giving specific manufacturer designs poor ratings because of crappy audio implementation is the way to get manufacturers to implement better solutions regardless of what their supplier gives them. Blaming their supplier gives them a cop out. Blaming ASUS gets them looking for innovative solutions and asking nVidia to supply them with better options integrated into future chipsets.
phusg - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Also the motherboard manufacturers complained at the high cost of the Dolby Digital Live licence (something like $5 a chipset if I remember rightly). I've always said nVidia should go have a chat with the competitors DTS. Wouldn't that be something?
DanaGoyette - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
I've been pondering this for a while:Since the nForce4 x16 northbridge uses Hypertransport to communicate with its southbridge,
and the nForce2 southbridge uses HyperTransport to communicate with its northbridge,
Shouldn't it be possible to replace or supplement the nForce4 southbridge with the nForce2 MCP-T and use its APU? Either that, or combine it with the nForce Professional MCPe?
Even better, use the nForce2 MCP-T with the GeForce 6100/6150 northbridge for integrated audio and video!
psychobriggsy - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
It all depends on whether the southbridge used (a standard nForce4 SLI) has a downstream HyperTransport link.I imagine it doesn't, therefore you have: [CPU]===[nF SP100]===[nF SLI]
I suppose you could connect an ULi PCIe southbridge to a couple of spare PCIe lanes for it's built in Azalia audio, and another bazillion SATA ports, IDE ports and USB ports, lol.
DanaGoyette - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Er, I didn't mean nForce Professional AND nf4 with the MCP-T, I meant one or the other. I wonder if it's even possible to use the NF2 southbridge like this. I believe the BIOS might take some work, but you never know until you try![CPU] - [nF Pro] - [NF2 MCP-T]
[CPU] - [SLIx16] - [NF2 MCP-T]
[CPU] - [gf6100] - [NF2 MCP-T]
yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
This board is definitely on my list to track pricing. If this thing comes down enough I'll be getting this when I build my new system instead of the older Asus SLI-Premium I was looking at.Hopefully Asus soon releases that sweet passively-cooled 7800series card (hopefully a GT) as well. It debuted in this article: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...">http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...
yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Can you mount an XP-90 on the processor without interfering with the heatpipes or MOSFETs around the socket?yacoub - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Did you guys test any of the aftermarket cooling systems like the XP90 and XP120 for clearance? That's rather important to overclockers, especially on a board like this!