It's March 5th, 2008... roughly 2-1/2 yrs after this review was written. I have a Opteron 146 on this board with 1GB of ECC/Registered Samsung Ram, 2 - BFG 6800GTX's in SLI and a PATA Primary HD on this board. Over-clocking my weak little 2GHz CPU just a standard 10% to 2200MHz, Sisoft Sandra 2007 puts me squarely in comparison with the AMD Dual-Core 4400 SLI, and my CPU core temp NEVER raises over 35degs (though this is contributed partially to my 120mm Case fan and, basically, a radiator (!) over my CPU...) My 6800-SLIs are FASTER than a single 7800 today... I've put this to the test in real world usage, from games to productivity and media production!

Only my case fan provides active cooling, and there is no additional cooling. Keep in mind, my machine has the following: 1-DVD/CD Reader, 1-CD Burner, 2-PATA Hard drives, 2-SATA Hard drives, the CPU, Memory, Vid cards, all onboard peripherals turned on, and an 800W PSU (X-Connect type with multiple 12V and 5V paths). The computer sits in my house, typically in a room with 70deg +- 10degs ambient temp.

I've had MSI, DFI, and ABit boards in the past (and now) with MASSIVE cooling (the 6-"Delta" Fans on the MSI board sound like an F-111 taking off!) that don't compare to the power or cooling ability of this machine, though it's in one of the smallest, most confined cases I have (a mid-tower).

I should mention that it is also one of the most stable PC platforms I have, and I work mostly with server-level systems (and Macs... and no, PC lovers, your machines are not anywhere near as stable as a Mac, hardware or software wise).

Asus' bios may not provide every bell and whistle for tweaking, but I'm impressed at the level of customization allowed in their bios; historically they've leaded the consumer industry in the customization market ever since the first Pentium level machines came out.

Obviously, many of you are just too young to really have a firm grasp on what you are talking about, falling for whatever marketing hype falls out of the window and relying on someone else's reviews to decide what's best for you.

It says it here in the review:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/asus-a8n32-sli/index.x?pg=1

"NVIDIA's RAID controller is perhaps the more impressive of these two features, as it's capable of spanning multiple arrays across both ATA and Serial ATA drives"

"2 channels ATA/133 with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 support
4 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 support
2 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1 support via Silicon Image 3132"

Can anyone confirm for me please? Does it have PATA RAID or not? Theres nothing on the Asus site about it, nor the manual, not even a driver and none of the reviews I can find mention it.

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=0&model=744&modelm...

I know its probably not important to most of you but ive got 1TB in pata ide drives and want to save as many pci slots as I can - buying sata drives at this point is not an option.

Thanks a lot :)

Is there really RAID 1, 0 and 5 on the IDE channels too? The asus website doesnt say anything about it

Running an Asus KN4-E Deluxe, which is an nforce 4 based mobo. This computer work as a server to files and wireless internet to my notebook. I am having nightmares about configuring the nvidia firewall and so far I was left with Windows wide open SP2 pathetic firewall. Does anyone kwos how to configure this firewall to work in home server like environment?

I have a question to TR and other readers, sort of related to the article.

I have just purchased the DFI Lanparty Ultra board a while ago. I started with a clean install and went with the 6.70 drivers. I installed everything except the Firewall and ActiveArmor, and for about a day everything was fine. Then, the next day during startup the system seemed to choke at the Windows XP loading screen. After about a minute the little animated progress bar actually disappeared, and the system failed to complete the bootup. I did a hard-reset, and this time, after about two minutes of loading - with worryingly unusual HDD activity - XP actually started up. I pulled up Event Viewer from Administrative Tools, only to find dozens of error messages, some related to the nVidia IDE driver, others saying I had a faulty hard drive. I quickly proceeded to uninstall the SW IDE drivers, and have had no prolonged boots and errors since then.

So, the question is: is there ANYONE out there who has the DFI board and is using the nVidia IDE drivers without issues? BTW I have a Seagate SATA 7200.8 Barracuda drive and an X2 3800+.

It seems the SW IDE driver is still horribly buggy. I really wish someone finally held nVidia responsible for failing to deliver on two of the most drummed-up features of their chipset - namely hardware accelerated LAN and a proper SATA-II (with NCQ) implementation. How can they get away with this?

I've heard that Dual x16 slots increases SLI performance when AA and AF are used vs. Dual x8 slots, is this true?

Asrock 939 Dual SATA II. Please.

Please.

The rest of you can have fun crackin off to this leet-ware.

For the record, I still believe that SLI is LAME. Single card performance is more than adequate, and only suffers half the depreciation of two cards. But wtf-ever.

And where the heck is VIA? After all, their last chipset was so good for my self esteem (according to their banner ad). When can I get another boost?

Vrock, you suddenly get humble on the front page?

Nice review, as usual.

I feel compelled to once again humbly request that T/R review the Asrock 939Dual SATA II board.

Reviews of uber-expensive SLI cards and motherboards are fun to read, but I think many T/Rers out there are more interested in the "bang for the buck" products.

#42, I have a DFI motherboard (LANPARTY nF4 SLI deluxe or whatever the acronym for that is) - running latest IDE drivers without a problem.

I'll point out again that MSI's NForce4 boards also include overclocking options that work reasonably well with Cool 'n Quiet enabled.

i have this motherboard and just hit 2.4Ghz, stock voltages on my 4200+ w/ stock cooling, and very modest case cooling. Idling at 47C. Barely outperforms a stock X2 4800+. I really like this MB.

I guess Asus got tired of Abit being classed as innovators for going the heat-pipe route and decided to "innovate" as well.

That is one ugly extension cooler. You really require excellent case cooling for a board like that.

agreed. I'm too cheap to spend 200+ on a motherboard. how about some budget reviews?

Honestly, I don't like the layout of this board to much. For me size is never an issue because I always have goliath sized cases that are sometimes 3 feet tall. The board looks quite a bit smaller then some of their previous ones, but that's only a small issue.

The main things I don't like about this board are:

A) 2X Silicon Raid - I have the Asus A8N-SLI which has 4X Silicon Raid ports, and I much prefer these to the NVidia ones. Having 3 SATA drives, two wouldn't be enough, in fact, I'd rather have 8 of those ports.

B) The setup of the PCIs. Lets face it, PCI isn't dead yet. I use a PCI Creative card and a Linksys wireless card. If I were to have say 2X 7800 GTX I just eclipsed all of my other PCI slots. I just think that the layout in that respect is very poorly done.

Otherwise another good quality board by Asus, lets hope they fixed the NForce 4 IDE problem.

first! now will it work with crossfire?

I've had this board for just under a week now and like it a lot so far. I "upgraded" from my MSI board for a couple of reasons:

1. The chipset fans on my last two motherboards both went south pretty quickly and had to be replaced. I wanted a motherboard cooling solution that didn't make noise and wasn't going to fail a month after I buy it.

2. I want to overclock my X2 4400+ up to 4800+ levels if possible. I was having problems with my MSI, so this looked like it might be better. If I can't overclock with this board, then I'm just going to give up.

It was a little more than I wanted to pay for a motherboard, but I'll be getting some of it back with the sale of my old board on ebay.

This board has 2 separate areas to change the CPU voltage. One contains several options in small increments. The other is a blanket 0.2v bump. They are cumulative and can provide a greater range than the review indicates. Note that while the verdict is still out, it appears the BIOS may limit the max voltage by core. I thnk it is in this thread: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=80491&page=1&p...

Any chance of getting a comparision of the effect of 8 phase power? e.g. CPU temp difference on this board compared to another board, difference in power used, etc.

Interesting board, but way overpriced and SLI is mostly a marketing gimmick to sell off epenis scores. A single 7800GTX with a decent CPU A64 3200+ or P4 560 can obtain playable framerates in any title including FEAR and COD2.

Did I miss something? I can't find comparisons to the old 8-lane in SLI.
I guess I'll have to dig up the old review? Darn you internet for making me work hard.

YAY! for raid 5.
really, i mean screw having dual x16 lanes, it's about frigging time they had raid 5 on their boards standard.

Excellent review, as always.

I like that passive heatsink on the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. Computer parts are more works of art the more I look at them.

I've been waiting for another review...Anands review shows the Asus doing signfignatly better even in single card setup than other boards...
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589&p=10

Scroll to bottom, somtimes higher than 17% and both boards 1x16!! I asked wes about this and he confimed testing and retesting this.. weird result being so diff from your review but I believe yours... No way could there be such a diff.

Anyway this is waaay to much for a motherboard these days when quality Sli boards are out there for $140 - and Asus does'nt even have Falta1ty pimping for them - no thanks.

Hehe, nice to at least once see the NA customers having to pay through the nose for a board. *lol*

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Yay. Time to read.