Asus P5N32-SLI: Dual x16 - What Dreams Are Made On . . .
by Gary Key on October 27, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The revised nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset now fully supports the dual core Pentium D processors in both stock and overclocked conditions. There were no issues with this board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor during testing. However, dual core really makes a difference in certain multi-tasking scenarios, as was demonstrated in the dual core performance preview. If you are interested in how the various chipsets perform in a real world multitasking setup, please take another look at that review.
The board’s memory was operated at 3-2-2-8-1T for the benchmarking suites and previous boards have been retested at this configuration and DDR2-667. This will be our standard test setting unless otherwise noted or the board fails to run at this speed. We also found that certain benchmarks scored better without Hyper Threading enabled, but in fairness, we felt that it was best to show consistent scores with this feature enabled as it is the main selling point of this processor model.
The revised nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset now fully supports the dual core Pentium D processors in both stock and overclocked conditions. There were no issues with this board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor during testing. However, dual core really makes a difference in certain multi-tasking scenarios, as was demonstrated in the dual core performance preview. If you are interested in how the various chipsets perform in a real world multitasking setup, please take another look at that review.
The board’s memory was operated at 3-2-2-8-1T for the benchmarking suites and previous boards have been retested at this configuration and DDR2-667. This will be our standard test setting unless otherwise noted or the board fails to run at this speed. We also found that certain benchmarks scored better without Hyper Threading enabled, but in fairness, we felt that it was best to show consistent scores with this feature enabled as it is the main selling point of this processor model.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2GHz, 800FSB, Dual-Core, HT enabled, 2x1MB L2) utilized for all tests Intel Pentium 820 (2.8GHz) for dual core verification |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL revision 1.3 Settings- DDR2-667 as noted at (CL3-2-2-8-1T) |
| Hard Drive(s): | 2 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer), 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition 6.82 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x XFX 7800GTX OC (PCI Express) for all tests 2 x MSI 7800GTX (PCI Express) for SLI Verification |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 78.01 for all tests; 81.85 for special results tests |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal MSI P4N Diamond Abit NI8 SLI Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal |
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Gary Key - Thursday, November 3, 2005 - link
Please email me and I will forward a picture of the remaining inductors without the heatsinks attached. There are eight of them and the picture is high-res so you can make out the various numbers.danidentity - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Does Anandtech plan on reviewing the AMD version of this board? The A8N32-SLI Deluxe?Gary Key - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link
Yes, Wesley will have it completed shortly.Tanclearas - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I look forward to that, particularly compared to the A8N-SLI Premium. I find it highly dubious that x16 SLI shows such noticeable improvements over x8 SLI. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am definitely skeptical. I would guess there is something else going on between those two boards.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Please note that I stated in the article- and -We found anywhere from a 3% to almost 11% difference between the x8SLi and x16SLI configurations with the first 3% coming from differences between the two respective board suppliers and the additional 7~8% coming from the additional bandwidth/optimizations at the higher resolutions between the two boards. The driver set utilized (81.85), video cards (7800GTX), applications (GPU intensive F.E.A.R.), driver settings (AA/AF on), and cpu combination account for the difference. We will have additional information on this in future articles including different game benchmarks were the differences are not as great but the base improvement still exists. There is a true base difference between the two configurations (could vary by board design) with the 81.85 driver set accounting for the majority of the difference after this initial improvement.
Tanclearas - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
No need to get defensive. I just think that a single comparison of two boards (from two different manufacturers) does not make a conclusive argument for those improvements being from x16 vs x8 SLI configurations. If the tests show the same pattern for the A8N-SLI Premium and A8N32-SLI, then I will start to believe that the additional PCIe bandwidth is indeed what is behind the increases. Right now, we have a sample of one, which should never be the basis of a conclusion.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I am not getting defensive and did not mean for the message to come across that way. I had clearly stated that several factors played into the equation and I agree the additional bandwidth is only part of the equation. However, the same base advantage held true over the MSI P4N with the Gigabyte Quad board with the 78.01 drivers and in SLI operations with the 81.84 and 81.85 beta drivers. I agree about testing x8sli against x16sli from the same manufacturer but in this case the x8sli board would have been the P5ND2-SLI Deluxe which had severe issues in several areas. In this example the argument would have made that testing any another x8sli board would have been more beneficial for results. ;->breetai72 - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Are the benchmarks used for comparison from old reviews or did you rerun the tests again for this review? If so, the results aren't worth comparing to given what you said about difference in drivers, etc.I find it very hard to believe that any graphics setup is exceeding the bandwidth of a x8 slot. The private pixel bus handles most of the traffic anyway.
Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
I reran all of the benchmarks for this article and also standardized on DDR2-667 at 3-2-2-8-1T as stated on the Test Setup page. There was no difference in numbers between the beta 81.85 and whql 81.85 drivers we used for the article. The 7800GTX SLI setup has the ability to exceed the x8 slot capacity and this is shown in the base benchmarks. I am sure the next article to be published will further show the differences between x8sli and x16sli. ;-) However, I will state once again that the main increases will come from the 81.85 drivers, certain GPU intensive games, 7800GTX SLI setup, additional AA/AF settings, and higher resolutions.Gary Key - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
Should be- "different game benchmarks where the differences". I hit the enter button accidently before checking my spelling.