A8N-E or A8V-E Deluxe

[Vesper8]

Hello all! I am new here but understand this is the place to come to find very knowledgeable people willing to help eachother out

I am trying to decide between one of these 2 boards

A8N-E or A8V-E Deluxe

I understand both have a cheap hsf fan which I'll be replacing with a zalman northbridge cooler.

From what I understand the pros of the A8N-E is that it has Nforce4 and the other one doesn't. But I don't completely understand the real advantage of that. I am really turned on by super fast sata transfer rates of 3gb/s. But let's be real.. if I get anything above 500mb/s I'll be very happy also ;p

As far as I can make it.. the pros of the A8V-Deluxe is it has a firewire port (unlike the other) and it has built in Wi-Fi which is kinda cool.

I'll be using this with a 3500+ venice core and some a corsair 2x512mb value kit ram. I don't plan on overclocking but the NOS feature sounds cool and it can overclock my system all it wants if it thinks it's safe ;p

Help me make my decision guys. I'm leaning towards the A8V-E deluxe but I would really like to know the true advantages of Nforce4 first to know if it has anything that would make me regret not getting it.

Thanks so much guys!

 

[Lukozer]

The Asus A8V-E Deluxe uses the VIA K8T890 chipset, which i am a big fan of since i use that chipset myself. The problem is that the A8V-E Deluxe is without doubt the worst implementation of the K8T890 available and is one of, if not THE, worst Athlon 64 motherboards on the market at the moment. During testing at Xbit Labs, they could not get the system to boot at all unless they ran their memory at 2T Command Rate, 1T was simply a no-go. This was regardless of what RAM they used (speed, brand, timings, anything). It also has some serious stability problems. To put it simply, avoid the A8V-E Deluxe at all costs...

I wouldn't say forget the K8T890 chipset though. I use the Abit AX8 and it is an extremely impressive board. I would recommend this above all other motherboards, however if you are set on an Asus board then the A8N-E is the one to get...

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

I think you already know the basic differences between the two.

One thing though, 3Gb/s is 300MB/s.

 

[yelo333]

As Lukozer said, the A8V-E Deluxe has a horrible track record so far. The abit ax8 looks like a good board, it just bothers me that they have yet to get out a bios revision beyond the initial one. It seems that by now, they should have an update for the venice core.

On the other hand, the A8N-E is, by all I can tell, a good board, with the exception of that NB fan. Do note that it does not have firewire, though.

 

[habs01]

Actually to be more precise, 3Gb/s = 3000Mb/s = 3000/8 MB/s = 375 MB/s.

BTW I'm also in the market for an upgrade and I'm seriously considering the A8N-E. I just wish I could find more feedback on this board. I know a fellow user here called "Endgame" has the board and prefers it over his DFI ultra-D. He has OC'd at 2,6 Ghz, I think.

 

[EndGame]

IMHO, definately, without question go for the A8N-E over the A8V-E chipset wise. The A8N-E uses the nForce Ultra chipset while the A8V-E uses the Via which has not been given very good marks in reviews.

No, the A8N-E does lack Firewire (I had no need since I had it with my Plat Audigy 2) but an addon card if you really need it is $7. My wife just switched her I-Pod to the supplied USB2 cable.

As far as the board itself, extremely stable right out of the box, overclocks easily and well, and is well laid out. Very good non-SLI board IMHO!

Oh, and for comparrison sakes, here's a review of some available chipsets......

A64 chipset review

 

[Onefastdak02]

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

DO NOT use the A8V-E Deluxe motherboard. It has MAJOR and MULTIPLE serious flaws. The primary one is that it still does work properly with many GeForce6600GT video cards, and some 6800/GT cards even after about five BIOS revs. The onboard USB 2.0 implementation is flakey, as well. The stock hs/fan on the chipset is the same ASUS is using for the rest of their boards--loud and WILL fail within six months, if not weeks.

Edited to say: Which is why I just ordered the A8N-E board, and a Zalman passive northbridge cooler to go with it. I do not want a loud and failure-prone fan on my motherboard!

 

[TheOldhand]

I'd be curious to know how well the Zalman passive cooler works on the A8N-E, and also the clearance that you have between it and your CPU cooler (and which one you're using), especially if it's a Zalman CPU cooler (7000 or 7700).