A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 versus A7N8X-E Deluxe

[MIDIman]

What's the difference between the two?

Feature-wise I'm seeing the original has an extra serial-port adapter, the -E doesn't.

The -E appears to add gigabit to the second LAN controller, and wireless adapter in the "Wireless Edition."

Other than, what else?

1) Do both have the exact same onboard ALC650 for sound?
2) On the A7N8X 2.0, which LAN port is better - nvidia/realtek (8201BL) or 3com/broadcom (AC101L)
3) Are both of these "ultra400," and if not, is there a significant performance difference?

Anything else?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mechBgon]

Easy ones first: they're both Ultra400 boards and I think you nailed the other significant hardware differences, the ones I'm aware of anyway. The -E also comes with some WinDVD software.

Which NIC's better? I guess it depends. If you want a little taste of gigabit performance, then the PCI-bound gigaNIC (actually a Marvell) is going to be up to about 3x faster in real life than the 100Mbit nVidia NIC. But the nVidia NIC isn't stuck onto the PCI bus, it's a level above it on the Hypertransport bus, so it leaves more PCI bandwidth for devices that actually need it (an Audigy2 or a TV-tuner card, for example). If you don't have a gigabit switch, might as well use the native nVidia 100Mbit NIC.

Asus's specs show the -E using the same sound, yep.

Hope that helps 🙂

 

[DaTute]

1) Yeah, it appears so.
2) Neither, they both do 10/100 so there really is no difference.
3) They're both Ultra400, which means they can do DDR Dual Channel if you put 2 identical sticks of RAM into it.

Apart from that, all I can see is the Gigabit LAN and Wireless option as the differences. It's entirely poissible they could be the only differences, companies have a tendency to do this, e.g DFI have a Lanparty Rev A and Rev B, the main differnce being the Rev B has gigabit LAN.

So really it's down to a price choice. Are you willing to pay the difference for the extra features?

 

[Nocturnal]

I have the -E version... the mobo doesn't automatically come with a built in wifi nic right? What kind of equipment would I need to get wireless working?

 

[MIDIman]

2) Neither, they both do 10/100 so there really is no difference.

Well - I figured that there is some performance differences between different brands of 10/100 PCI cards and that there might be a difference between these two chips. mechBgon seems to say that the Nvidia is on a different bus and might perform a bit better? I'm not looking at the difference betwen the gigabit/10-100 on the -E, but the two 10/100's on the a7n8x 2.0.

I have the -E version... the mobo doesn't automatically come with a built in wifi nic right? What kind of equipment would I need to get wireless working?

I believe the wireless edition includes an extra adapter, which you can also purchase separately. Not sure if its entirely worth though other than to just be using that extra wi-fi slot. Its only 802.11b, though it is a bit cheaper than the PCI cards usually go for.