ASUS M2N32-SLI & Epox MF570SLI: AM2 Wunderkinder
by Wesley Fink on June 28, 2006 5:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming Performance
We tested with our recently revised group of game tests, which includes Call of Duty 2, Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Far Cry, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. All boards were tested with the NVIDIA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.27 drivers. The ATI Reference Board was additionally tested with a single ATI X1900XT with Catalyst 6.4 drivers for Reference.
ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe results are in red and Epox MF570SLI results are in bright green. It was a bit of a surprise that both these boards finished at or near the top of standard gaming performance. The ASUS generally provided best results among the seven tested boards, followed closely by the Epox MF570SLI.
SLI/CrossFire Gaming Performance
Both major players in the Video Market now have flagship Dual X16 solutions. SLI and CrossFire are about gaming, so dual video tests were confined to gaming benchmarks, and the test suite is heavily slanted to recent and popular titles where SLI and CrossFire make the biggest difference. All dual video testing was at 1600x1200, 4xAA, and 8xAF. Tests were also run with a single X1900XT at this same resolution. The single video high-res results on the ATI AM2 are in Orange and the CrossFire results are in Red.
You might think you are looking at results from different video cards in CrossFire/SLI performance. Here leads are larger and positions are often switched from results at standard resolution without the eye candy. ATI CrossFire is the clear winner in Serous Sam2, COD2, and Splinter Cell-Chaos Theory, while NVIDIA SLI owns Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. Part of these multi-GPU results revolve around which card has optimized drivers available, and ATI just announced Catalyst 6.6 drivers with promised significant performance improvements in F.E.A.R. and HL2. The new 6.6 drivers will be used for testing the retail ATI AM2 motherboards in Part 4 of the AM2 Motherboard Roundup. Among NVIDIA 500 based motherboards, the ASUS and Epox were normally at or near the top of the SLI performance charts.
We tested with our recently revised group of game tests, which includes Call of Duty 2, Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Far Cry, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. All boards were tested with the NVIDIA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.27 drivers. The ATI Reference Board was additionally tested with a single ATI X1900XT with Catalyst 6.4 drivers for Reference.
ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe results are in red and Epox MF570SLI results are in bright green. It was a bit of a surprise that both these boards finished at or near the top of standard gaming performance. The ASUS generally provided best results among the seven tested boards, followed closely by the Epox MF570SLI.
SLI/CrossFire Gaming Performance
Both major players in the Video Market now have flagship Dual X16 solutions. SLI and CrossFire are about gaming, so dual video tests were confined to gaming benchmarks, and the test suite is heavily slanted to recent and popular titles where SLI and CrossFire make the biggest difference. All dual video testing was at 1600x1200, 4xAA, and 8xAF. Tests were also run with a single X1900XT at this same resolution. The single video high-res results on the ATI AM2 are in Orange and the CrossFire results are in Red.
You might think you are looking at results from different video cards in CrossFire/SLI performance. Here leads are larger and positions are often switched from results at standard resolution without the eye candy. ATI CrossFire is the clear winner in Serous Sam2, COD2, and Splinter Cell-Chaos Theory, while NVIDIA SLI owns Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. Part of these multi-GPU results revolve around which card has optimized drivers available, and ATI just announced Catalyst 6.6 drivers with promised significant performance improvements in F.E.A.R. and HL2. The new 6.6 drivers will be used for testing the retail ATI AM2 motherboards in Part 4 of the AM2 Motherboard Roundup. Among NVIDIA 500 based motherboards, the ASUS and Epox were normally at or near the top of the SLI performance charts.
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leexgx - Sunday, April 15, 2007 - link
i am trying to get an stable overclock from this m2n32-sli deluxe got an 3800+ X2 at 2.65 (10x265) when i set it to 2.70 270 it just BSODdo i need to up MB and SB volts up ? as well or lower the NB to SB as well
if any one could point me to an web site that has overclocked one of these motherboards be usefull
mss242 - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
doesn't the asus also offer raid 5? Page 2 lists raid options as 0,1,0+1,10, and JBOD.darkswordsman17 - Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - link
Something I've noticed is a lot of boards are starting to get DDL/Dolby Master Studio and DTS Connect capabilities, but Anandtech doesn't even mention it half the time, and doesn't even test it at all.I think it would be worth looking into, as its really starting to become a viable alternative to Creative's surround solutions (EAX support wouldn't even matter if its being encoded in DD/DTS would it), which more than a few people do not like (although myself am fairly neutral as I've liked the Creative cards I've owned). Also, there are plenty of people sore over losing DDL support when they moved to a newer platform than nForce2 with SoundStorm. I often see people saying how they still miss it, and yet, its been here for almost 6 months already (Intel Bad Axe, possibly others). I see a lot of new boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and Abit featuring support for these.
Also a lot of these new boards are using different chips to handle processing, so maybe that makes a difference as far as quality or performance.
I just think it would be beneficial at the very least to make a note of it, as its not always easy to find out what boards actually do support them.
Just a thought.
classy - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
Why not show the results of the scores gained from oc?DrMrLordX - Friday, June 30, 2006 - link
Probably because it's a review of the motherboard and not the CPU itself. All a motherboard review needs is information about the maximum HTT speeds achieveably on the board at stock.saratoga - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
The CPU use numbers for the on board audio are great, but it'd also be nice to know just how good the actual quality is. If theres massive THD or a resampling problem, benchmarks will look great, but the part may still suck.Using RMAA would allow people to see immediately if there were any serious issues with the sound quality such as poor resampling or noise.
Seeing as other tech sites have started using it, it'd be nice if you guys could too. See this review:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/soundblaster-...">http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/soundblaster-...
Obvious so much info isn't needed for a motherboard review, but posting the summary chart that RMAA spits out with the crosstalk, SNR, IMD and THD numbers would be great.
Gary Key - Thursday, June 29, 2006 - link
We will post RMAA results when a new audio chip is introduced. I will run the results on this chipset and have it available in our next article. We actually used RMAA 5.5 in a previous article and had more comments wanting subjective analysis. However, we will do the short version of the test results. :)Sifl - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
With a new and interesting built-in WiFi option (as far as ATX MOBO's go), why not show us the antenna and where it goes?
For the Asus board layout, I can see all the IO ports (letter designations on the image could help identify which connector is which) but I'm not sure where the WiFi antenna would go. Is it the little gold colored thing off to the right in the picture for rear IO? Because I don't see that same thing in the top views. Maybe another view is better like a perspective view of the ports, rather than the straigh-on view.
And why does the Epox lack Firewire -- But has 10 USB's ?! Who uses 10 USB ports? Firewire is just basic for any digital video equipment. I chose my current MOBO (Epox 9NPA+) because it HAS Firewire. Maybe they will have another model with it included.
Myrandex - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
"Who uses 10 USB ports?" I do...But then again I also use firewire, bure still it would have been stupid for Epox to have included less USB ports (arrggg EVGA's microATX nForce4 SLI mobo of mine only supporting 8). Back 6 have printer, Windows Media Center Remote sensor, mouse, cell phone data/charger for MPX220 (mine), and cell phone data/charger for Motorola V3 Razr (g/f's), and webcam. Then only 2 of my front 4 USb ports can be connected, and that means I can only use 2 USB devices in the front (ranging from hard drive cages for testing, flash sticks, USB controllers for emulators, etc.) For a manufacturer to have a chipset with 10 USBs yet only implement 8 is just kind of backwards and extremely pointless :-/
On a side note I did have to laugh at PCI/AGP Fixed at 33/66 as there seem sot be no AGP on these boards for it to be locked at 66 :)
Jason
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
Yes, the antenna screws to the gold connector on the right of the rear IO port on the Asus.As for no firewire on the Epox, it is likely a cost savings to meet a target price point. Most of the digital cameras we have seen recently have emphasized high-speed USB2 instead of Firewire, although we agree Firewire is still widely used in digital cameras and video. Add-on Firewire cards are very reasonable, but they would be an added expense if you required Firewire on the Epox.
The MSI 570 reviewed at http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2773&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2773&am... is also based on the nForce 570 chipset and does feature Firewire.