Overclocking

Before continuing, we do want to mention that the system handled all the AI N.O.S. settings just fine. We stuck with our typical OC setup; open Lian Li V1000 case with a Koolance EXOS configured at high speed fan settings. We also used the heatpipe onboard fan ASUS includes with the package.

For the most part, we did not have much difficulty pushing our Athlon 3500+ from 2.2GHz to 2.75GHz (11x250), but we did have to hard lock the Corsair XMS3500 memory at 250GHz and relax the CAS settings to CL3. The system, while booting fine, did have problems running our benchmarks, so we backed off a bit 245MHz to attain stability. Overall, one of the best Athlon 64 overclocking boards we've had the opportunity to test.

Final Words

We received a PDF outlining the benefits of SLI X16. Based on the results from the PDF and some of those we've found online, SLI X16 generally allows for a 2% to 7% improvement in most situations. There are slightly higher improvements, but by no means will we see anything like 50%. Due to the setbacks we've had putting the test bed together, we did discuss the matter with some peers and the common thoughts are benchmarks will demonstrate a marked improvement going from SLI X8 to SLI X16, but the experience remains more or less the same. Of course, as newer games emerge and perhaps with the 7900 series we will see a wider gap, but those of you currently using solid SLI X8 boards probably won't lose too much sleep if you hold off SLI X16 boards at this time.

That said, if you are in the hunt for a new board, the will rank pretty high on VL's recommended list for a number of reasons. Performance was generally better than the MSI K8N Neo4 Diamond on average, which up until today was the fastest NVIDIA SLI board, let alone an Athlon 64 board, in our labs. Out of the box, the A8N32-SLI worked like a charm, with no problems whatsoever. There have been a number of reports about subsystem issues, but here's what we discovered:

The NVIDIA NIC worked just fine throughout testing. There have been reports of corrupt files with the ActiveArmor firewall enabled (with default settings), so we moved a large number of files ranging from 20MB to 3GB to and from the A8N32-SLI to an ASUS P5N32-SLI with no issues. We also uploaded several 100MB RAR files to our FTP site as well as downloaded several game patches with no corruption. On a side note, the Marvell NIC also performed well, with slightly lower CPU usage than the NVIDIA NIC. However, when enabling Windows firewall on the Marvell interface, we consistently saw CPU usage about 2% higher than the NVIDIA NIC.

We will be coming back to this in a future review with the P5N32-SLI board, but we experienced no hard drive issues, specifically the NCQ enabled Seagate 7200.8. There have been several reports that NVIDIA's SW IDE driver has been somewhat buggy with Seagate drives, but we had no problems with the A8N32-SLI at all. We were not able to test the NVIDIA RAID, but note that many have been reporting issues with it and for some it has yet to be resolved. It seems that the problem exists with several NVIDIA based boards and not limited to ASUS.

Overclocking and stock stability were excellent. Not only did we attain our highest Athlon 64 overclocks with the A8N32-SLI, we have now been running several weeks at these settings, 24/7 with a few occasional shutdowns for the purposes of another review. The only odd behavior we experienced was changing a couple ATI based cards where the driver would fail installation a couple times, but we're certain it isn't a board issue.

Noise is a moot point unless you're using a water cooled setup, ironically enough. The heatsinks scattered on the board do get very hot under load when using a water cooler and I highly recommend using the included onboard fan. It may not be necessary when running at stock speeds (it still gets hot though), but I think it's a mandatory installation overclocked.

The only real drawbacks we have is that the storage options are not as extensive as their Premium products. Some things also don't really make sense here as RAID with the SI controller is out of the question since only one internal SATA port is included onboard (the second connection is an external port). Finally, it has not affected us yet, but the CMOS reset is in an incredibly annoying location and will become an issue for those running SLI setups.

The is quite expensive, but we think you're getting a very solid product for the money. Naturally, the SLI aspect will not be a make it or break it deal for some depending on your needs, but for those looking to run SLI, especially a high-end setup, should definitely consider this board. Again, if you have a good SLI board already, or you're dreaming of running the ultimate low-end SLI setup (which makes you an odd person, but what do I know?), this board may not provide the best value. The placement problems we found are minor, and may not affect a lot of users, though that will vary on your needs.

We did not talk much about ActiveArmor as we've covered them in our nForce4 AMD and Intel overviews, but for those who are concerned with security (and who isn't), the A8N32-SLI's network features will make your PC one of the most secure at the next LAN party, and the SLI X16 component will make it one of the fastest provided you have the rest of the hardware to back it up.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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