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Socket 940 Roundup: Motherboards for the Athlon64 FX

 by Wesley Fink on December 18, 2003 1:39 PM EST
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10 Comments

Asus SK8N: Board Layout and Features

The Asus SK8N was one of the first boards to be introduced for the Opteron. However, as a single CPU board, the SK8N has gone through many BIOS revisions and has evolved into a feature-rich Athlon64 FX board. The latest 1004 BIOS completes the transition with a wide range of multipliers and voltages for the FX Enthusiast.



The Asus SK8N is a full-size, ATX 3-phase design with plenty of room for an effective layout of the on-board options. The basic layout of the board is a bit different than usually seen; the CPU is in the middle of the board and the 4 memory slots are at the top of the board, instead of the more commonly seen upper-right location. In general, the layout works quite well with only 1 complaint.



The 20-pin ATX connector and the 4-pin 12 volt connector are both in our preferred upper right position. The location of the memory at the top of the board removes all chances of interference with the 8X AGP slot, and will work well in most designs except those with extra CPU cooling just below the Power Supply.



The only issue in the board design is the location of the floppy, which is at the bottom right of the motherboard. Since the SK8N is designed for the Enthusiast Athlon64 FX chip, this board is more likely to be used in a full tower. In some tower designs, this will be an issue.



The IDE connectors, IDE RAID, and 2 SATA connectors are all in good locations. They should present no problems in most case designs.



With the CPU in the middle of the board, it should be an easy task to have enough room for just about any heatsink/fan that you can imagine. Certainly, there will be no problems with standard Socket 754/940 coolers. There was no problem mounting any of the HSF on hand, including the huge Zalman CNPS7000.



LAN is provided by the Realtek RTL8201BL chip.



Since the SK8N design is one of the older Asus designs, we see the Realtek ALC650 used for audio. This is an acceptable solution if audio is not a critical issue, but it is not at the same quality level as the more recent 100db S/N ratio Realtek ALC658 or the ADI SoundMax seen on more recent Asus designs.



I/O port offerings on the SK8N are good, if a bit puzzling. It is unlikely that Asus planned for an integrated video model of the SK8N, so the missing serial port is a puzzle. Included are 4 USB 2.0 ports, LAN, Firewire, Parallel, one serial, 3 mini audio jacks, and PS2 keyboard and mouse ports. Two additional brackets are included: one provides a single Firewire port, and the other provides 2 USB 2.0 ports. An additional audio bracket is not included.

Basic Features: Socket 940 Motherboards Asus SK8N: BIOS and Overclocking
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  • AnonymouseUser - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link

    Since this review is for the Athlon64 FX motherboards, shouldn't the links for the "Anandtech Deals" (just below the title) be for Athlon64 FX (socket 940) instead of the non-FX 3200+ (socket 754)?

    O_o

  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link

    #7 -

    The scores with the 11/03 nVidia platform drivers combined with Catalyst 3.9 and the latest BIOS' we tested have dropped the GunMetal 2 benchmarks to those reported in this review. We have discussed the very unusual GunMetal scores we got in the past with Yeti Studios who is looking into the scores.

    At this point, we are concerned that the GunMetal 2 bechmarks are really telling us very little about the performance of the boards and systems we are testing. Unless Yeti can update or explain what we have been seeing in Socket 940 scores, we will likely drop GunMetal 2 from our benchmarks.

    We apologize for the confusion regarding GunMetal 2 bechmarks, but we have shared with you over several reviews our growing skepticism over their validity in benchmarking FX and Opteron.

  • TrogdorJW - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link

    #7, if you look at those benchmarks in question, the results are HIGHLY questionable in the original benchmarks. They even mentioned it at the bottom of the page:

    "The astounding scores in GunMetal 2 by the Dual-Channel Opteron and Athlon64 FX51 are difficult to explain, since they are not duplicated by our single-channel Athlon64 benchmark. We were convinced that these scores on the original Opteron must be a fluke until they showed up again in our tests and retest of the K8NNXP-940 Dual-Channel."

    My bet is that the earlier versions of the GunMetal benchmark were in some way flawed. Perhaps it was a driver issue, and the game was really only rendering about 2/3 of the screens that it was reporting. Given that all the other systems appear to be close to maxed out on frame rate by the graphics card, the FX and Opteron scores were initially incorrect and have now been fixed.

  • justly - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link

    Wesley Fink, I have had issues with previous Anandtech articles and I thought (or at least was hopefull) that they would happen less often with some of the new staff. I now regret being so hopefull as I am still seeing the same problem.

    What I would like to know is what would cause the gun metal benchmarks on the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 to drop 25% or more since the review of that same board on 9 Oct (there was even a link to this article on page one).

    I realize that the motherboard and video drivers have changed along with some hardware, and BOIS updates mentioned on page 1 (stating that they "offering improved performance and added features"). The thing is that none of these changes should lead to this kind of preformance hit. What is the story here, was there a mistake in benchmarking, if so what article is correct, if not how do you explain this since most of the other benchmarks on this board varied (an estimated)5% or less.

  • Icewind - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link

    Doubtful #5 as there is no BIOS option to enable or disable it for the VIA boards.

  • bex0rs - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link

    The integrated LAN on the SK8N is 10/100 only, not gigabit as mentioned several times.

    http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=SK8N&langs...

    http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.asp...

    Also, would there be any way to run the HT bus on the VIA boards at 600 to make a determination if that is the limiting factor on nV's implementation?

  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link

    #1 - You are correct, and page 4 has been corrected. The SATA ports for the SK8N were correctly stated as 2 in the Feature listing for the 4 motherboards.

  • Icewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link

    Unless im mistaken #1, is that one right next to the CPU cooler itself in the picture below? Hard to judge from the contrast

  • Icewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link

    Best to wait for the 939 pin socket without the unregistered memory modules. I know I will. Paired with a possible PCI Express, SATA 2.0, ATi's 420, 2004 is gonna be a freaking expensive upgrade but better get the best before I finally move outa my folks house.

  • adipose - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link

    http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1936&p=...

    On this page you state:

    The IDE connectors, IDE RAID, and 4 SATA connectors are all in good locations. They should present no problems in most case designs.

    But I believe the SK8N only has 2 SATA connectors, and I can only see two on the image.

    -Dan
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