motherboard delema

[velocci]

Hi there, I'm building a new machine soon and I decided a while ago that i'd be be getting the Asus A8N32-SLI delux motherboard. One of the reasons is cause if i ever do SLI gaming, each PCIe slot would be at 16X rather than 8X like other mobos. But I just realized that the DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert has 8 SATA ports and their IDE ports have raid. The Asus mobo has 5 SATA ports (one is external) and its IDE ports don't have raid, but the pcie slots are both 16x with SLI. So my question is, is the dual 16X pcie slots in SLI mode make a big difference over the 8X that you'd get with the DFI mobo?

 

[Skott]

Right now the biggest advantage 32x has over the 16x is at high resolutions. 1600x1200 or higher. Supposedly thats going to change as new cards come out. nVidia is supposed to make tweaks to take advantage of the 32x. But that has yet to happen as far as I know. Also ASUS just released a new bios update for that mobo last week according to a post I saw. Dunno what, if anything, it does for the mobo.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: velocci
Hi there, I'm building a new machine soon and I decided a while ago that i'd be be getting the Asus A8N32-SLI delux motherboard. One of the reasons is cause if i ever do SLI gaming, each PCIe slot would be at 16X rather than 8X like other mobos. But I just realized that the DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert has 8 SATA ports and their IDE ports have raid. The Asus mobo has 5 SATA ports (one is external) and its IDE ports don't have raid, but the pcie slots are both 16x with SLI. So my question is, is the dual 16X pcie slots in SLI mode make a big difference over the 8X that you'd get with the DFI mobo?

The Nvidia IDE ports are Raid capable in fact, Nvidia allows you to raid the IDE and NV SATA ports together. The 2 SI SATA ports can be Mirrored or Striped with no problems (though the external one puts a kink in that). The difference is that the Asus added a SI chhip that is 3Gb (or SATA 300MB/s) compatible while DFI is using a SATA 150MB/s one. Sadly SI doesn't make a 4 SATA 300MB/s controller yet. Asus was doing the same thing with their Nforce4 SLI boards before but especially with the Premium the older SATA ports (even if more numerous) were considered a con.

 

[MadAd]

I was confused by the RAID too, Im possibly buying one and went looking for PATA raid in the A8N32-SLI specs and they say nothing, but if you go to page 2-24 of the manual (the online PDF from the asus site) youll see a section named 2. IDE Connectors and at the bottom it says:

"These connectors support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5 and
JBOD that spans across the Serial ATA drives."

So Im assuming that it does indeed support pata raid.... my main question is if the performance is going to be on par with a Promise TX2000/4000 card or not because its only got one PCI slot in SLI, and thats for an X-fi.

 

[rgrea]

Hello velocci,
I am doing the same thing you were at last month. I'm courious to find out which way you went and the set up you went with. I don't do any gaming I just want the rig to hover from the speed.................... I bought the case Cooler Master 830 Stacker and have Power supply, I want the AMD X2 4400 CPU and have the Corsair 2 GB of 3200C2 memory. It's real tough to find solid info on which way to go. The DFI and Asus in the SLI brand seem to be the fastest and most loved on the net. I am so confused that I am tempted to buy both and have a little fun.
Let me know, please
Robert
Virginia USA

 

[velocci]

Hey Rgrea, I haven't built the system yet. I will probably go with the Asus mobo.
if you are not into games, then you don't need dual 16x PCIe slots. so in that case you may want to go with the DFI board and get the extra Sata ports if you need them.
I found out later that the Asus board's IDE ports are raided. On the other hand, the Asus board has an external Sata port. this is good for an external HDD where normally you'd use the USB2 or firewire ports. the external sata port would be faster than usb2 or firewire.

Originally posted by: rgrea
Hello velocci,
I am doing the same thing you were at last month. I'm courious to find out which way you went and the set up you went with. I don't do any gaming I just want the rig to hover from the speed.................... I bought the case Cooler Master 830 Stacker and have Power supply, I want the AMD X2 4400 CPU and have the Corsair 2 GB of 3200C2 memory. It's real tough to find solid info on which way to go. The DFI and Asus in the SLI brand seem to be the fastest and most loved on the net. I am so confused that I am tempted to buy both and have a little fun.
Let me know, please
Robert
Virginia USA