ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe - Page 20

Conclusion

The first thing that users will be impressed with is the retail package for the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe. It practically has it all, from IDE cables to PCI modules and power cables. The black colored PCB looks rather impressive as well, with different colors for every connection interface. The motherboard design seems robust something we have come to expect from ASUS who designe first class products.

The mainboard has a bunch of smart utilities and offers a wide range of goodies and benefits and supported interfaces. x8 SATA (3Gb/s) are more than enough, 2 Ethernet controllers are all you'll ever need, and 2 IEEE1394a connections are not always needed, since firewire devices can be daisy-chained together with one IEEE1394a port. The only thing that is missing is WiFi support. The A8N-SLI Deluxe showed excellent overclocking potential, boosting up our test CPU (AMD64 3500+ NewCastle) by 10%.

We were very curious to see how the two ASUS Extreme N6600GT with SLI enable dwould perform. We were happy to see a major boost in performance with almost all tested procedures we undertook although unfortunately, overclocking capabilities are limited in SLI mode.

On the other hand, the SLI interface target group is made up of computer enthusiasts, that will not be disappointed by the SLI performance. But only in some cases did the two 6600GT based graphics cards outperform NVidia's 6800Ultra performance. Considering the price that end users will have to pay to purchase two 6600GT cards instead of just one 6800GT, SLI enabled motherboards are mainly attractive for users that are considering a "GPU upgrade". The ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, combined with two SLI certified 6600GT graphics cards, received CDRInfo's Editor's Choice Award.

Pros:

• Excellent features
• Excellent performance
• Monitoring utility from Windows
• SLI enabled
• NV hardware based firewall
• Q-Fan and AI NOS features
• Great motherboard overclocking capabilities

Cons:

• Low GPU overclocking potential in SLI mode

Like to be fixed

• Better NVidia drivers with further improved advance dynamic load balancing algorithms

Features
Performance
BIOS/Overclocking
Value for money