DH Review: Asus A8N SLI Deluxe

Zardon · Jan 30, 2005, 12:56 AM

Nearly two months ago ATI released their Radeon Xpress chipset for AMD cpu’s, it was one of the first boards to be with reviewers which featured PCI Express for the AMD platform. The Xpress chipset has yet to make it to market however the NForce 4 boards are beginning to trickle through; one of the first boards to do so is the Asus A8N-SLI. It’s no secret that we love Asus products here at Driverheaven, over the last 2 years every product we have received from them has been first class in terms of performance and build quality, so going into the review we hoped for the same from the A8N-SLI.

read the review here

Zardon · Jan 30, 2005, 12:58 AM

We mentioned in the A8N review that there were some comments we wished to make regarding SLI, so here they are. You should remember that these are not a direct reflection on the A8N in any way, they are specifically on SLI regardless of the motherboard used.

Our basic concern at this time with SLI is the lack of performance increases you will get for the current price you'd have to pay to get a setup running. As SLI modes must be enabled in the Forceware drivers in order for a game or application to benefit from the setup the current support is limited. Here is the list as of the 66.93 drivers...

AFR games/apps:

Serious Sam SE
Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic
IL 2 - Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles
Return to Castle Wolfenstien
Medal of Honor
Quake3
Doom 3
AquaMark 3
Code Creatures
City of Heroes
Ground Control 2
Age of Mythology
Armed and Dangerous
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: ET

SFR games/apps:

Tribes - Vengeance
Shadermark 2.1
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Tron 2.0
Spellforce
AquaNox 2
Painkiller
Battlefield Vietnam
Colin McRae Rally
The Sims 2
Max Payne 2
Unreal 2

There are also a number of games which have specific workarounds (profiles to fix issues with standard AFR/SFR) in the driver which are SLI enabled, they are as follows:

3DMark05
Tomb Raider
Half-Life 2
Halo
Jedi Academy
Jedi Academy MultiPlayer
3DMark03
PCMark04
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal
X2 The Threat
Far Cry
3DMark01
Trees of Pangaea
HDRLighting

We like to think here that we test a wide spectrum of games in our gfx card reviews so as to simulate what you guys at home will be playing. If we imagine that your current fave games are the same as our review titles you'd find SLI working in Half-Life 2 and Doom3. Colin McRae 2005 may work (the profile doesnt seem to be specific) and we have not yet tested MOH:PA though the driver does mention MOH. Our other games such as Rome Total War, Prince Of Persia Warrior Within, Need for Speed Underground 2, Tiger Woods 2005 and Lord Of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth would not gain any increase from an SLI setup. Considering all but Tiger woods 2005 have been released since SLI was announced this is quite disappointing.

What is also worrying is that most of those titles appear in the driver as games which are specifically set to single card rendering. These games would appear to be ones which cause display issues or bugs when SLI is enabled. That full list of single card rendered games is:

Call of Duty
Call of Duty MultiPlayer
Splinter Cell
MS Flight Simulator 2004
Comanche 4
Dungeon Siege
Lock On
Contract Jack
Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis
NHL 2005
Prince of Persia
Perimeter
Tiger Woods 2005
Kohan 2
Silent Storm
TOCA Race Driver 2
Star Wars Battlefront
Rome Total War
Need for Speed Underground
Hitman Contracts
MVP Baseball
Madden 2005
Soldiers Heroes of WWII
Joint Operations Typhoon Rising
Leisure Suit Larry
Tony Hawk's Underground
Myst 4
Conan
America's Army
Thief 3

Therefore at this time we do not recommend shelling out money on 2 graphics cards to run in SLI. Even if you plan to get 2x6600's there are a large number of games currently that you will be restricted in performance to the level of 1 6600 only. We would recommend that the best course of action just now is to buy a SLI capable motherboard (we can highly recommend the A8N) and a high end graphics card such as the 6800Ultra or X850XTPE and wait until SLI matures more and more games/applications are supported (Nvidia inform us that more games are being added every day). Then you can make the decision to buy a 2nd 6800 or to buy the latest and greatest single card from ATI and Nvidia (i.e. R520/NV50).

Just for the record, we have no doubt that SLI will be a great technology in the future, we just dont feel at this time that the money you would pay for the setup is worth the increase in perfomance over a single 6800U or X850XTPE in the majority of games.

CDsDontBurn · Jan 30, 2005, 09:06 AM

One of the guys at work has this board and two 6800 Ultras in his system. He likes the performance, but is upset about the games he has to play with just one card. SLI has a great deal of performance behind it, but as of right now, it's really buggy. But as Zardon has said, this is being worked on and fixes are coming out for it.

Zardon · Jan 30, 2005, 09:26 AM

Last night I uploaded the wrong Doom3 flash graph, thanks to redsolar this was pointed out to me and ive fixed it. apologies - but it was a long day!

bananaman · Jan 30, 2005, 10:43 AM

excellent review!

thanks for doing the ATI on ATI, NV on ATI etc. section, i have been looking for someone to do this and it was most interesting!

thanks for all your hard work

NANA

mkk · Jan 30, 2005, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDsDontBurn

One of the guys at work has this board and two 6800 Ultras in his system. He likes the performance, but is upset about the games he has to play with just one card.

Yeah these things really make the value of going with that path lower a bit, making the price tag even more beyond any reasonable level. Though as the well written review concludes one could go for an SLI board an a single 6800GT or similar card today, to add a second card if the value of having another card in SLI mode increases in the future. I'd still feel it to be a bit of a gamble within the near future, but for those with a decent economy I guess it'll be worth a shot.

CDsDontBurn · Jan 30, 2005, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mkk

Yeah these things really make the value of going with that path lower a bit, making the price tag even more beyond any reasonable level. Though as the well written review concludes one could go for an SLI board an a single 6800GT or similar card today, to add a second card if the value of having another card in SLI mode increases in the future. I'd still feel it to be a bit of a gamble within the near future, but for those with a decent economy I guess it'll be worth a shot.

If one were to do the SLI thing w/two 6600GTs with this or any board that supports SLI, it would be best if they used that money to get one 6800GT. The price of the one card will be the same as the two cards running in SLI, and one won't have the issues of playing with one or two cards in certain games.

Like you said, unless one has the money to go for it, SLI for all it's problems it has encountered so far is not worth it.

**G.I.BRO** · Jan 31, 2005, 02:06 AM

Excellent review as always...
Any news if the regular ultra version of this will be out? Non SLI i mean? If so its either going to be this or the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D that i shall upgrade to!!

***Veridian3*** · Jan 31, 2005, 09:33 AM

I think mainstream availablility of the A8N non SLI was set as february... so with days i would think.

pigdog · Jan 31, 2005, 03:01 PM

As you can see from my "updated" sig, I have just purchased this MOBO (along with a new cpu, hard drives, PSU, DVD burner.......woops; sorry, bit carried away there

.

I had a major attack of retail therapy!

The reason why I bought this board is quite simple - there were no non-SLI PCIe/939 boards available anywhere!

(and I just couldn't wait to.........

play with my new X850xt!

)

I'm yet to test it out, so I may be gone for some time

HawgsHead · Feb 4, 2005, 09:41 PM

My SLI rig will be finished tomorrow.I have only built 1 computer in my life so I have a professional helping me every step of the way. It will have 2 BFG 6800 ULTRA's.Which Forceware drivers do yawl think I should run????Are there special Forceware for this setup?.....Thanks!

Jan 30, 2005, 12:56 AM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,481 Rep Power: 162	DH Review: Asus A8N SLI Deluxe Nearly two months ago ATI released their Radeon Xpress chipset for AMD cpu’s, it was one of the first boards to be with reviewers which featured PCI Express for the AMD platform. The Xpress chipset has yet to make it to market however the NForce 4 boards are beginning to trickle through; one of the first boards to do so is the Asus A8N-SLI. It’s no secret that we love Asus products here at Driverheaven, over the last 2 years every product we have received from them has been first class in terms of performance and build quality, so going into the review we hoped for the same from the A8N-SLI. read the review here

Jan 30, 2005, 12:58 AM	#2
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,481 Rep Power: 162	In stuarts absense im posting this for him We mentioned in the A8N review that there were some comments we wished to make regarding SLI, so here they are. You should remember that these are not a direct reflection on the A8N in any way, they are specifically on SLI regardless of the motherboard used. Our basic concern at this time with SLI is the lack of performance increases you will get for the current price you'd have to pay to get a setup running. As SLI modes must be enabled in the Forceware drivers in order for a game or application to benefit from the setup the current support is limited. Here is the list as of the 66.93 drivers... AFR games/apps: Serious Sam SE Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic IL 2 - Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles Return to Castle Wolfenstien Medal of Honor Quake3 Doom 3 AquaMark 3 Code Creatures City of Heroes Ground Control 2 Age of Mythology Armed and Dangerous Warhammer 40k Dawn of War Return to Castle Wolfenstein: ET SFR games/apps: Tribes - Vengeance Shadermark 2.1 Battlefield 1942 Battlefield 2 Tron 2.0 Spellforce AquaNox 2 Painkiller Battlefield Vietnam Colin McRae Rally The Sims 2 Max Payne 2 Unreal 2 There are also a number of games which have specific workarounds (profiles to fix issues with standard AFR/SFR) in the driver which are SLI enabled, they are as follows: 3DMark05 Tomb Raider Half-Life 2 Halo Jedi Academy Jedi Academy MultiPlayer 3DMark03 PCMark04 Unreal Tournament 2003 Unreal Tournament 2004 Unreal X2 The Threat Far Cry 3DMark01 Trees of Pangaea HDRLighting We like to think here that we test a wide spectrum of games in our gfx card reviews so as to simulate what you guys at home will be playing. If we imagine that your current fave games are the same as our review titles you'd find SLI working in Half-Life 2 and Doom3. Colin McRae 2005 may work (the profile doesnt seem to be specific) and we have not yet tested MOH:PA though the driver does mention MOH. Our other games such as Rome Total War, Prince Of Persia Warrior Within, Need for Speed Underground 2, Tiger Woods 2005 and Lord Of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth would not gain any increase from an SLI setup. Considering all but Tiger woods 2005 have been released since SLI was announced this is quite disappointing. What is also worrying is that most of those titles appear in the driver as games which are specifically set to single card rendering. These games would appear to be ones which cause display issues or bugs when SLI is enabled. That full list of single card rendered games is: Call of Duty Call of Duty MultiPlayer Splinter Cell MS Flight Simulator 2004 Comanche 4 Dungeon Siege Lock On Contract Jack Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis NHL 2005 Prince of Persia Perimeter Tiger Woods 2005 Kohan 2 Silent Storm TOCA Race Driver 2 Star Wars Battlefront Rome Total War Need for Speed Underground Hitman Contracts MVP Baseball Madden 2005 Soldiers Heroes of WWII Joint Operations Typhoon Rising Leisure Suit Larry Tony Hawk's Underground Myst 4 Conan America's Army Thief 3 Therefore at this time we do not recommend shelling out money on 2 graphics cards to run in SLI. Even if you plan to get 2x6600's there are a large number of games currently that you will be restricted in performance to the level of 1 6600 only. We would recommend that the best course of action just now is to buy a SLI capable motherboard (we can highly recommend the A8N) and a high end graphics card such as the 6800Ultra or X850XTPE and wait until SLI matures more and more games/applications are supported (Nvidia inform us that more games are being added every day). Then you can make the decision to buy a 2nd 6800 or to buy the latest and greatest single card from ATI and Nvidia (i.e. R520/NV50). Just for the record, we have no doubt that SLI will be a great technology in the future, we just dont feel at this time that the money you would pay for the setup is worth the increase in perfomance over a single 6800U or X850XTPE in the majority of games.

Jan 30, 2005, 09:06 AM	#3
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 22,085 Rep Power: 160 System Specs	One of the guys at work has this board and two 6800 Ultras in his system. He likes the performance, but is upset about the games he has to play with just one card. SLI has a great deal of performance behind it, but as of right now, it's really buggy. But as Zardon has said, this is being worked on and fixes are coming out for it. __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297

Jan 30, 2005, 09:26 AM	#4
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,481 Rep Power: 162	error fixed Last night I uploaded the wrong Doom3 flash graph, thanks to redsolar this was pointed out to me and ive fixed it. apologies - but it was a long day!

Jan 30, 2005, 10:43 AM	#5
bananaman banana muncher Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: London Posts: 1,254 Rep Power: 48	excellent review! thanks for doing the ATI on ATI, NV on ATI etc. section, i have been looking for someone to do this and it was most interesting! thanks for all your hard work NANA __________________

Jan 31, 2005, 02:06 AM	#8
G.I.BRO To Have and to Hold Join Date: May 2003 Location: Ontario Posts: 527 Rep Power: 0	Excellent review as always... Any news if the regular ultra version of this will be out? Non SLI i mean? If so its either going to be this or the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D that i shall upgrade to!! Last edited by G.I.BRO; Jan 31, 2005 at 02:13 AM.

Jan 31, 2005, 09:33 AM	#9
*Veridian3* Administrator Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Cloaked Posts: 3,228 Rep Power: 82	I think mainstream availablility of the A8N non SLI was set as february... so with days i would think.

Jan 31, 2005, 03:01 PM	#10
pigdog HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 459 Rep Power: 43 System Specs	I had to sell my car to buy this stuff As you can see from my "updated" sig, I have just purchased this MOBO (along with a new cpu, hard drives, PSU, DVD burner.......woops; sorry, bit carried away there. I had a major attack of retail therapy! The reason why I bought this board is quite simple - there were no non-SLI PCIe/939 boards available anywhere! (and I just couldn't wait to......... play with my new X850xt!) I'm yet to test it out, so I may be gone for some time __________________

Feb 4, 2005, 09:41 PM	#11
HawgsHead Rest In Peace Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Danville Virginia.The United States of America"In the God of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob We Trust" Posts: 2,012 Rep Power: 0	My SLI rig will be finished tomorrow.I have only built 1 computer in my life so I have a professional helping me every step of the way. It will have 2 BFG 6800 ULTRA's.Which Forceware drivers do yawl think I should run????Are there special Forceware for this setup?.....Thanks! __________________ Rig specs to the left in the boxes....X-Box 360 w/Hitachi 42" HDTV....If Darwins theory of evolution is true then why are monkeys still monkeys?It takes much more faith to believe in Darwin's theory over the Genesis account of creation.