Asus A7N8X Review Comments

~~David~~ · Jan 13, 2003, 11:53 PM

Tell us what you think.

***craig5320*** · Jan 13, 2003, 11:55 PM

Excellent review, and the boards made it onto my list of possible upgrade options. Cheers David

choppy9er · Jan 14, 2003, 12:14 AM

That was one of the finest review presentations I have ever seen.You know just what the overclocker needs to see and the specs that are important.I hope to see alot more of these reviews for motherboards and graphics.This websight has become one of the best tech sites on the web in a very short time.I am proud to be a member,keep up the good work!!!Choppy

Zardon · Jan 14, 2003, 12:20 AM

thanks choppy, nice thing to say

digitalwanderer · Jan 14, 2003, 12:41 AM

That sounds like one sweet mobo, but I've always been partial to Asus.

Great review, very thorough and easy to understand.

( You didn't have to give me a byline for a couple of graphs, but "Thank you, sir!".

)

~~David~~ · Jan 14, 2003, 12:57 AM

I wanted to say thankyou to Asus guys for helping me with some issues with cpu usage during HDD transfers. So far they have been great thier should be an update shortly on it.

Necrosis · Jan 14, 2003, 09:29 AM

Most of you know I've built a system recently using this same board. I was very impressed with it myself and am thinking about buying one to replace the board I have now. I too was surprised it didn't have raid like the slightly cheaper A7V8X has. However, what it lacks it sure does make up for in bios settings.

It has a 1/6 divider unlike the KT400's 1/5.

In laymen's terms if you want to run 400MHz DDR (w/ a 333MHz Athlon) in the KT400 it will only run at 333MHz. You actually have to overclock your PCI bus to 40MHz to achieve this. Now with this board you just setup what you have and it just simply runs.

peroni · Jan 14, 2003, 04:55 PM

What are you saying this board does not allow you to lock the PCI/AGP bus to 33/66 Mhz?
Please tell me I'm wrong.

Faust · Jan 14, 2003, 06:02 PM

While I found the review thorough and informative, I was astonished that staff would format and publish an article containing over 2.5 megabytes of graphics on a solitary page.

My browser choked on the images on this page 1/4 through loading. At that point I was forced to scroll up from the bottom, manually refreshing dang near every picture on the page. It took me over 15 minutes to load the entire article!

Shoddy work. Sorry, but it's quite simply shoddy, lazy work.

If this is the standard on this website I'm not likely to read through any more reviews for fear of having my modem ambushed for no good reason.

I've got better things to do!

DaSnIpE · Jan 14, 2003, 06:32 PM

Nice work, clean and concise, exactly what we wanted to read.

Zardon · Jan 14, 2003, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Faust
While I found the review thorough and informative, I was astonished that staff would format and publish an article containing over 2.5 megabytes of graphics on a solitary page.

My browser choked on the images on this page 1/4 through loading. At that point I was forced to scroll up from the bottom, manually refreshing dang near every picture on the page. It took me over 15 minutes to load the entire article!

Shoddy work. Sorry, but it's quite simply shoddy, lazy work.

If this is the standard on this website I'm not likely to read through any more reviews for fear of having my modem ambushed for no good reason.

I've got better things to do!

actually you make some good points. I keep forgetting the guys on dial up. next time ill break the review up into pages. I wanted to go with high res images as many reviews use quite low quality images.

the page was done in one night (after working a 10 hour day), so yes perhaps it was rushed. I certainly wouldnt say im lazy though.

im sorry my design seems to have detracted from davids excellent work on the review though. something ill sort for the next one. apologies.

Necrosis · Jan 14, 2003, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by peroni
What are you saying this board does not allow you to lock the PCI/AGP bus to 33/66 Mhz?
Please tell me I'm wrong.

Exactly..that is what I'm saying.

Zarathustra · Jan 14, 2003, 07:09 PM

Great review David! In-depth with tons of pictures, just what the doctor ordered

Zardon · Jan 14, 2003, 07:21 PM

actually guys I did a quick alteration to the layout and broke it up onto 3 pages for those on dial up.

I hope this helps everyone, and sorry again if this caused problems for those on dial up.

ill set up a nicer template for the page switching for the next article, perhaps in java. for the moment, the quick page links will be suffice.

peroni · Jan 14, 2003, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Necrosis
Exactly..that is what I'm saying.

I wonder if it's a Nforce2 thing then.
Most i845 boards (even cheaper brands than Asus) have the possibility of locking the agp/pci clock.
It's a very handy feature.
In fact I think the thing I'll be looking forward is a way to set the memory clock independently from the cpu.
Or is there already a board that allows that?

Necrosis · Jan 15, 2003, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by peroni
I wonder if it's a Nforce2 thing then.
Most i845 boards (even cheaper brands than Asus) have the possibility of locking the agp/pci clock.
It's a very handy feature.
In fact I think the thing I'll be looking forward is a way to set the memory clock independently from the cpu.
Or is there already a board that allows that?

Opps..I thought you was talking about the A7V8X. I was referring to that board and why the A7N8X is better for 333MHz FSB processors.

Sorry.

~~David~~ · Jan 15, 2003, 10:18 PM

Update : So far I we are working very hard with Asus on recreating the problem i am having with cpu usage during hdd transfers. They are a wonderful company and have been very helpful. Hopefully all issues will be resolved soon

Faust · Jan 15, 2003, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zardon
actually guys I did a quick alteration to the layout and broke it up onto 3 pages for those on dial up.

I hope this helps everyone, and sorry again if this caused problems for those on dial up.

ill set up a nicer template for the page switching for the next article, perhaps in java. for the moment, the quick page links will be suffice.

THANK YOU!

I appreciate the effort immensely. I also conceded to having been a bit harsh by calling you lazy. Honestly, we all have busy lives and sometimes it's difficult to squeeze in the last yard. My apologies for rudeness.

niemic · Jan 16, 2003, 01:02 AM

Thanks for the information, I am looking to buy that this board

ChaosOnFIre · Jan 16, 2003, 01:55 AM

Very nice review. Excellent Board. Now I just need some $$$ to buy one.

wlsh242 · Jan 17, 2003, 02:04 AM

Dear Customer,
Thanks for choosing ASUS tek.

yes you can do RAID with regular HDD on this motherboard ,but you need the adaptor to realize it , and sorry we don't have the adapter
compatible with the motherbaord.
sorry for any of your inconvenience.

Best Regards,
ASUS Customer Service Center Shanghai
¡»

I hope your wrong about Raid for the A7N8X Deluxe and this guy from ASUS is right. Yesterday UPS brought me 2 serial ATA/ATA adapter's from Abit and tomorrow Friday I'm picking up the A7N8X Deluxe. I'm kinda hooked on Raid 0 for loading games.

wlsh242 · Jan 18, 2003, 05:16 AM

Raid 0 works with the serial ATA and you can use regular HD's with the adapters from Abit. They sure don't make it easy. Just setting up XP now so I don't know much yet. The board seems fast so far.

FuNsTeR · Jan 21, 2003, 07:25 PM

sweet reveiw David .... but i think i'll stick with my Abit board for the time being .... as its doing a grand job ... all this onboard graphics/sound does nothing for me as i prefer "sound Cards" "Graphic Card" ... if i upgrade anything it will be to one of them Maudio Revolution 7.1 sound cards ... when they are available here

mgs · Apr 3, 2003, 05:22 AM

this is my first asus and after doing lots of reserach on this borad, it dose exactly what it said it would. I love it,

2700xp @ 2.300
9700 pro @ 385/351
enermax 465
512 corsair ex pc3200LL sync
3d2001se 16554
3d2003 5465

Jan 13, 2003, 11:53 PM	#1
~~David~~ Banned Join Date: May 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 959 Rep Power: 0	Asus A7N8X Review Comments Tell us what you think.

Jan 13, 2003, 11:55 PM	#2
*craig5320* HH Administrator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 8,568 Rep Power: 445 System Specs	Excellent review, and the boards made it onto my list of possible upgrade options. Cheers David __________________ HardwareHeaven on Facebook

Jan 14, 2003, 12:14 AM	#3
choppy9er DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Weatherford,Texas Posts: 42 Rep Power: 0	That was one of the finest review presentations I have ever seen.You know just what the overclocker needs to see and the specs that are important.I hope to see alot more of these reviews for motherboards and graphics.This websight has become one of the best tech sites on the web in a very short time.I am proud to be a member,keep up the good work!!!Choppy __________________ Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 AMD 3000+Winchester 512 Patriot XBL(2x512) Thermaltake Venus 12 (2) Maxtor D740X 40gig Highpoint Rocket Raid PCI Striped Sapphire Radeon 9500 Softmodded Soundblaster Audigy Antec Truepower 480 Liteon 16X DVD Liteon 52/24/52 CDRW Chieftech Server Case

Jan 14, 2003, 12:41 AM	#5
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	Great job! That sounds like one sweet mobo, but I've always been partial to Asus. Great review, very thorough and easy to understand. ( You didn't have to give me a byline for a couple of graphs, but "Thank you, sir!". ) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jan 14, 2003, 06:02 PM	#9
Faust DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: nowhere Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	While I found the review thorough and informative, I was astonished that staff would format and publish an article containing over 2.5 megabytes of graphics on a solitary page. My browser choked on the images on this page 1/4 through loading. At that point I was forced to scroll up from the bottom, manually refreshing dang near every picture on the page. It took me over 15 minutes to load the entire article! Shoddy work. Sorry, but it's quite simply shoddy, lazy work. If this is the standard on this website I'm not likely to read through any more reviews for fear of having my modem ambushed for no good reason. I've got better things to do! Last edited by Faust; Jan 14, 2003 at 06:07 PM.

Jan 14, 2003, 12:20 AM	#4
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	thanks choppy, nice thing to say

Jan 14, 2003, 12:57 AM	Thread Starter #6
~~David~~ Banned Join Date: May 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 959 Rep Power: 0	I wanted to say thankyou to Asus guys for helping me with some issues with cpu usage during HDD transfers. So far they have been great thier should be an update shortly on it.

Jan 14, 2003, 09:29 AM	#7
Necrosis HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 8,838 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	Most of you know I've built a system recently using this same board. I was very impressed with it myself and am thinking about buying one to replace the board I have now. I too was surprised it didn't have raid like the slightly cheaper A7V8X has. However, what it lacks it sure does make up for in bios settings. It has a 1/6 divider unlike the KT400's 1/5. In laymen's terms if you want to run 400MHz DDR (w/ a 333MHz Athlon) in the KT400 it will only run at 333MHz. You actually have to overclock your PCI bus to 40MHz to achieve this. Now with this board you just setup what you have and it just simply runs.

Jan 14, 2003, 04:55 PM	#8
peroni DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 591 Rep Power: 0	What are you saying this board does not allow you to lock the PCI/AGP bus to 33/66 Mhz? Please tell me I'm wrong.

Jan 14, 2003, 06:32 PM	#10
DaSnIpE Driverage Snipe Join Date: May 2002 Location: Montreal, Canada or NYC, USA Posts: 372 Rep Power: 0	Nice work, clean and concise, exactly what we wanted to read. __________________ Antec SX1030 Case - Enermax 431 W Whisper PS - 4 Case Fans -ThermalRight AX-7 With Panaflo Ultra Fan - Sb Audigy / Logitech Z-560 Speakers / Sennheiser HD497 Headphones WD 80GB 7200 rpm HD - Samsung SyncMaster 955DF - LG 16x10x40x Burner / Pionner 16x Slot DVD View my rig http://nl.dodhq.net/Rig/

Jan 14, 2003, 07:09 PM	#13
Zarathustra Elite Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: The Confederacy Posts: 841 Rep Power: 0	Great review David! In-depth with tons of pictures, just what the doctor ordered

Jan 14, 2003, 07:21 PM	#14
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	actually guys I did a quick alteration to the layout and broke it up onto 3 pages for those on dial up. I hope this helps everyone, and sorry again if this caused problems for those on dial up. ill set up a nicer template for the page switching for the next article, perhaps in java. for the moment, the quick page links will be suffice.

Jan 15, 2003, 10:18 PM	Thread Starter #17
~~David~~ Banned Join Date: May 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 959 Rep Power: 0	Update : So far I we are working very hard with Asus on recreating the problem i am having with cpu usage during hdd transfers. They are a wonderful company and have been very helpful. Hopefully all issues will be resolved soon

Jan 16, 2003, 01:02 AM	#19
niemic DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 8 Rep Power: 0	Thanks for the information, I am looking to buy that this board

Jan 16, 2003, 01:55 AM	#20
ChaosOnFIre DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Victoria, B.C. Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	Very nice review. Excellent Board. Now I just need some $$$ to buy one. __________________ Clan WHO.. CS/BF1942

Jan 17, 2003, 02:04 AM	#21
wlsh242 HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: FL USA Posts: 44 Rep Power: 0	Dear Customer, Thanks for choosing ASUS tek. yes you can do RAID with regular HDD on this motherboard ,but you need the adaptor to realize it , and sorry we don't have the adapter compatible with the motherbaord. sorry for any of your inconvenience. Best Regards, ASUS Customer Service Center Shanghai ¡» I hope your wrong about Raid for the A7N8X Deluxe and this guy from ASUS is right. Yesterday UPS brought me 2 serial ATA/ATA adapter's from Abit and tomorrow Friday I'm picking up the A7N8X Deluxe. I'm kinda hooked on Raid 0 for loading games.

Jan 18, 2003, 05:16 AM	#22
wlsh242 HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: FL USA Posts: 44 Rep Power: 0	Raid 0 works with the serial ATA and you can use regular HD's with the adapters from Abit. They sure don't make it easy. Just setting up XP now so I don't know much yet. The board seems fast so far.

Jan 21, 2003, 07:25 PM	#23
FuNsTeR Caledonian and Proud Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Darkest Ayrshire Posts: 1,305 Rep Power: 88 System Specs	sweet reveiw David .... but i think i'll stick with my Abit board for the time being .... as its doing a grand job ... all this onboard graphics/sound does nothing for me as i prefer "sound Cards" "Graphic Card" ... if i upgrade anything it will be to one of them Maudio Revolution 7.1 sound cards ... when they are available here __________________ "They say when you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear satanic messages ..... but that's nothing, if you play it forward it will install Windows"

Apr 3, 2003, 05:22 AM	#24
mgs DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 34 Rep Power: 0	A7N8X DX owner this is my first asus and after doing lots of reserach on this borad, it dose exactly what it said it would. I love it, 2700xp @ 2.300 9700 pro @ 385/351 enermax 465 512 corsair ex pc3200LL sync 3d2001se 16554 3d2003 5465