Asus A7N8X vs A7N8X Deluxe

[Link19]

I am trying to decide between the Deluxe and standard version of this motherboard. I don't need serial ATA and I am not sure if I want the Dolby Digital Sound Storm. What would be better sound quality?- The Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer sound card hooked into a PCI slot, or the onboard SoundStorm Dolby Digital Audio that the A7N8X Deluxe comes with? Does adding PCI cards to the PCI slots on your motherboard slow down system perfromance at all? I also read that the Deluxe model comes with Port Reporter. What exactly is a Port Reporter? I want 4 USB 2.0 ports. Can I use a 4X AGP Video card such as the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 in the AGP 8X slot. It says that for the AGP 8X slot that it is 1.5 volt only? Are there ever any times where I would need to use a different voltage setting for the AGP slot? If I add a PCI EIDE controller card, will that slow down system performance on either one of these boards? Will I be able to hook a hard drive with 8 MB cache to it and have it perform just as well as it would hooked to the standard EIDE interfcae on the A7N8X standard motherboard? I heard that some EIDE controller cards had a hard time handling 8 MB cache hard drives. Is this true? Could I hook an EIDE ATA/100 7200 RPM hard drive with 8 MB cache to the serial ATA controller on the Deluxe version motherboard with just as good of performance for the drive and system as if it were hooked to the regular EIDE controller? Could I do the same with any type of CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, or DVD-RW drive on the onboard serial ATA controller and/or the EIDE controller card that goes into a PCI slot? Are there any other features that the deluxe version has that the standard version does not that I may not know about or many may not know about? With DDR SDRAM dual channel, does it just double your bandwidth, or does it double your MHz speed too? If it doubles your MHz speed, and I had DDR SDRAM 333 MHz, would that mean it would operate at 666 MHz?

Could as many people as possible please respond. I need as many opinions and suggestions as possible.

 

[mechBgon]

The differences between the Deluxe and standard:

• Deluxe has two network jacks so you can make your system the middleman between your broadband internet connection and the rest of your home network, if desired. Standard has one network jack.
• Deluxe has POST Reporter, which speaks error messages out loud, such as "System completed Power-On Self Test! " or the dreaded "System CPU fail! :Q"
• Deluxe has Firewire, great for hooking up some digital camcorders and such
• Deluxe has the Soundstorm audio, which is said to be better than the Audigy 1
• Deluxe comes with a bracket to provide an additional two USB 2.0 ports through a PCI slot cover

Regarding all the PCI questions, the PCI bus has a maximum theoretical throughput of 132Mb/sec, whereas the stuff that's built into the motherboard's southbridge is riding an 800Mb/sec bus between the northbridge and southbridge, so it's desirable to use the IDE controllers in the southbridge if practical, and leave the PCI bus clear for stuff like video-capture cards or whatnot. Because the SATA controller rides the PCI bus, it shares this limitation and the performance of a drive on the SATA controller is probably going to be just the same as on the regular IDE controller.

The AGP slot will take all 1.5V AGP cards, whether 4X or 8X. The video cards on the market now and for the last year or so are virtually all 1.5V. So it's pretty much a non-issue.

The dual-channel memory doesn't actually double anything, exactly. It just gives the system a second memory controller that can be used in parallel with the first one, and the northbridge load-balances between them to get the best performance. Its primary benefit is to increase the performance of the onboard video in nForce2 boards that have onboard video. The A7N8X's don't have onboard video, so it's not going to give you large boosts in system performance... expect about 4-6% increases in performance.

Tip: the next time you have that many questions, try to break them up into paragraphs...

 

[floccus]

Deluxe has the Soundstorm audio, which is said to be better than the Audigy 1

Yes and No... The Soundstorm specifications do create better sound than that of an Audigy 1 card. The problem is that Soundstorm is only a specification set and not an end result. This means that actual implementations dictate sound quality. The A7N8X delux can best an SB Live! but not an Audigy. The whole situation is somewhat moot though since most people can't actually tell the difference. Sure a bunch of people will say they can, but then I can say I'm the King of Canada...

 

[mechBgon]

Hehe, well, no and yes. Here is some info on SoundStorm and there are some actual output specs that must be met to earn the certification. But I haven't heard an Audigy myself, so I'm not saying the A7N8X-Deluxe is truly better or worse, that just seemed to be the general opinion. Rojak Pot on SoundStorm certs

Edit: and haha, now that I look at the article, it's been updated and the A7N8X-Deluxe has mysteriously vanished off the SS-certified list anyway :Q LOL, so much for that!

 

[floccus]

Tom's Audio thingy

Pretty much sums up what happend with the A7N8X delux in the conclusion.

For AMD fans, we can only recommend the excellent nForce 2, provided it is implemented on the motherboard with the APU. But be warned, a lot of manufacturers don't actually use this part of nForce 2, going instead for the slower, conventional audio chips.

 

[swNYC]

I have the Audigy X-Gamer Retail & SB Live 5.1 and now I have replaced it with the onboard Soundstorm on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe.

I've done extensive testing over the weekend with my set of Klipsch 4.1s. I've blasted everything from rock, techno, pop, classical, jazz and even opera. (My neighbor just moved out )

I would say the Audigy and Soundstorm are about the same. The Audigy card has slightly (by a tiny margin) better response in the low-ranges & vocals. This means you will have to turn up your subwoofers a bit to get the same bass when using the soundstorm. However the Soundstorm has much better channel seperation and surround effects. For the best sound, don't use the equalizer, the 'create center channel' and the 'surround encoding' setting. The Soundstorm beats the SB Live 5.1 outright.

I would rate the soundstorm a 9.0/10, and the Audigy 9.125/10. I chose the soundstorm since it doesn't use a PCI slot, and 3DMark03 Benchmarks are slightly faster. Try playing 192kbps or better MP3 files and you'll never go back to the Audigy. If you don't have a set of decent speakers, get a set of 5.1 speakers with digital input, so you can bypass the Realtek DAC.