ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus: NVIDIA's 650i goes Dual x16
by Gary Key on April 2, 2007 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Synthetic Graphics Performance
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still very valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our 3DMark06 test, all of board are basically even with only an 89 point separation from first to last. Our ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus board scored in the middle of the pack and offered the best video scores of our test boards but one of the lower CPU scores in this benchmark. While this issue did not repeat itself in our other benchmarks, we still found it strange as the results were opposite with the other 650i SPP based boards.
In the more memory and CPU sensitive 3DMark01 benchmark we see our ASUS Plus board leading all boards with 1T timings and scoring in the middle of the pack with 2T settings. While the differences are not significant, this board does offer excellent benchmark scores when utilizing 1T memory settings.
General System Performance
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. This benchmark is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of Graphics, CPU, Hard Disk, and Memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature while providing consistency in our benchmark results.
The ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus board tops our charts in this very competitive benchmark and we are starting to see a pattern emerge with the latest board releases performing slightly better than our boards released last year. The 650i and 680i chipsets scored very well on the single task disk benchmarks with the 680i performing slightly better in the graphics subsystem tests where they led the field. Our 975X and P965 chipset boards won the multitasking tests while the RD600 offered middle of the road performance in most of the tests. Our ASUS Plus board scored better in the multitasking tests than the other NVIDIA boards which propelled it into first place as its graphic scores were only about 1% lower than the 680i LT SLI.
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still very valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our 3DMark06 test, all of board are basically even with only an 89 point separation from first to last. Our ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus board scored in the middle of the pack and offered the best video scores of our test boards but one of the lower CPU scores in this benchmark. While this issue did not repeat itself in our other benchmarks, we still found it strange as the results were opposite with the other 650i SPP based boards.
In the more memory and CPU sensitive 3DMark01 benchmark we see our ASUS Plus board leading all boards with 1T timings and scoring in the middle of the pack with 2T settings. While the differences are not significant, this board does offer excellent benchmark scores when utilizing 1T memory settings.
General System Performance
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. This benchmark is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of Graphics, CPU, Hard Disk, and Memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature while providing consistency in our benchmark results.
The ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus board tops our charts in this very competitive benchmark and we are starting to see a pattern emerge with the latest board releases performing slightly better than our boards released last year. The 650i and 680i chipsets scored very well on the single task disk benchmarks with the 680i performing slightly better in the graphics subsystem tests where they led the field. Our 975X and P965 chipset boards won the multitasking tests while the RD600 offered middle of the road performance in most of the tests. Our ASUS Plus board scored better in the multitasking tests than the other NVIDIA boards which propelled it into first place as its graphic scores were only about 1% lower than the 680i LT SLI.
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yacoub - Sunday, April 29, 2007 - link
Just curious about the audio CPU usage test usually done on boards...Leinad - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
In the FAQ for this board on the Asus website, the board is listed as a 680i board. Newegg lists it as a 650i board, and Anandtech likewise calls it a 650i board. Nice to finally see an explanation.Looking forward to the Motherboard roundup!
goinginstyle - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
Any chance of testing some cheap memory?sWORDs - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
I'm really disappointed by this review, it's not up to the usual Anandtrch quality. Let me explain why:You can not call this a 650, because there is no nForce 430 southbridge.
Calling the southbridge a AMD570 is a bit misleading, because NB 570AMD = NB 590AMD = SB 590AMD = SB 590i = SB 680i.
Further more there might not even be a difference in the northbridge even if it has 8 lanes disabled, those aren't connected with the "real" 680i's either. They appear as a hidden link, the links on the Hybrid also have a missing #1 port, so it's there, not sure if it's cut or disabled. The only bord that appears to use it isn't here yet, it's the MSI Diamond with 4 PEG ports.
Besides this, you failed to notice that the pcb is actually a Striker Extreme (just peak under de Plus sticker). So any difference between this bord and a Striker Extreme are caused by difference of Bios, or between individual bords. You can't compare one Striker and one Plus and One Evga and make chipset conclussions, two Strikers might end up on different FSB speeds.
"680i SLI chipset utilizes the nForce 590 SLI MCP and 680i SLI MCP." That should be 680i SPP.
Memory timing differences should be caused by bios difference. THe Striker has a 1004 bios ready did you use that?
Dainas - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Great, so theirs only one PCI slot(rendered useless if you SLI) and the only PCIe 1x is rendered useless if you put a decent videocard in this machine.Not that any friggin SLI/Crossfire LGA board on the market can be considered much better should you want to have more than a soundcard installed.
sWORDs - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
It has two PCI slots and only one would useless when using SLI with double sized cards. The only PCIe 1x is useless when using a double sized card.yacoub - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Btw this board gets some horrid reviews over on NewEgg. Sure, the user reviews there are known to be pretty tough because anytime someone has a bad experience they're ten times more likely to write about it than someone who has a good experience. But still, compare the reviews of this board with the reviews of the MSI board Anandtech reviewed last week.I wouldn't consider buying this Asus board seeing how many DOAs and other problems folks are reporting with it. The MSI, which doesn't overclock as well, seems much more likely to at least be a 100% functioning product.
How sad that the motherboard market has become this unreliable. I remember when Asus was a board you'd pay just a little more for because it would be solid.
kilkennycat - Monday, April 2, 2007 - link
.. 0501 has an extensive list of 23 fixes over 0402 !!The current latest is 0602 BETA.
See the Asus website. Make sure that you search for the PLUS version of the P5N32E-SLI.
Tuffrabbit - Monday, April 2, 2007 - link
It is interesting that the "budget" 650i board draws a whopping 47 more watts at idle than even the Flagship D975 Intel board ???Tuffrabbit - Monday, April 2, 2007 - link
Correction: Make that 57 watts...