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Buy A8N-SLI Premium now .. or wait for A8N32-SLI ?

1

1000

Junior Member
Hi All.

I'm upgrading my system at the moment...as and I was looking at a A8N-SLI premium mobo. This board has 2x PCI 16 slots.. running at 8x2.

The upcoming A8N32-SLI from Asus runs the 2 PCI-16 slots at full 16 speed. I've only managed to find a single review so far which suggested that there was virtually no tangible benefit in the full PCI-16 bandwidth offered by the A8N32-SLI.

Although the review stated there was no real benefit, it did mention that all that could change with a new bios version or nvidia driver set for SLi cards.

I can't find the board for sale, or even pre-order in Australia yet (some of our online PC retailers post the products for preorder 2 months ahead.. so this board must be quite some time away from retail release here).

Has anyone seen any HARD EVIDENCE that it's worth waiting for the A8N32-SLI with it's 2 full 16 speed slots over an existing Nvidia SLI rig with PCI-E16 slots running 2x8 speed ? If you don't have any hard evidence, what else have you read and if so what do you trust ?

I'm not keen to wait coz I want my new rig but if there may be a 10-20% boost to my 7800GTX cards I plan to get it might be worth it.

Cheers

1000
 
I don't think there will be a performance benefit, however, I do think there will be an ease of use benefit in that currently with the Premium Board, switching to SLI is a two step process, first you need to switch the board from single 16x lanes to dual 8x lanes and then you need to enable SLI. While both can be done from software, they each require a reboot. You should be able to eliminate one step with this new board.
 
I presently run my 7800GTX on my Asus SLI Premium board in an 8x PCI-E fashion, because i moved it to the second slot for better airflow / cooling. I did comprehensive benches between running it in this manner versus using it in the primary 16x slot and there was NO difference whatsoever.

The ONLY reason I would opt for the newer A8N32 is if the fix the CPU vcore issue to get voltages beyond 1.45v, and not fluctuating; so only really applicable if you overclock.
 
As far as performance is concerned, you'll gain nothing with the 32X.

You do lose 3 or 4 serial ATA ports

And the placement of the video cards sucks. Not enough air in between as with the a8n sli premium
 
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