Martog Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 I have seen on one yet has posted up a review of the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, or any other SLI board for that matter, and I know there are users on here with them. I am currently running SLI setup, and please, do not, I repeat, do not spaz on me that I am using two 6600GT?s and I could have gotten a single 6800GT for the same price, blah blah blah, because I do not care. How am I supposed to test SLI if I do not have two identical cards to do it? I possibly cannot do that. I had to split it up to multiple posts because of the image restrictions. Alright, let?s get started with some pictures: Box Shots: Board and CPU shots: Note the video card select is set to Dual cards that is how I got it, contrary to what the manual says: Installation: Was just as any other normal motherboard would be aside from the SLI connector. This board does have a 24pin ATX connector instead of a 20pin, you can use the 20pin just fine, but I bought an adapter for now until I buy a new power supply later this year. The video cards are in place (yes I did move that CPU fan so the cord was facing up to tuck it away): The card bridge just slides over onto the gold fingers, and you put the retention bracket it on it to make sure it does not slip off. You also have to plug in a 4pin Molex connector right above the primary video card if you are using SLI because of the power requirements. Installation of Windows went like normal, I used the nForce 4 SATA port for my Raptor. I was using a converter to use my IDE HDD on my SATA port on my P4C800-E Deluxe, but it wouldn?t recognize the drive on this board, oh well, I am replacing it later with a SATA drive anyhow. Windows seemed to install a little faster. The first boots were very, very, very slow though. A couple minutes for the XP boot screen to disappear. This was due to the lack of drivers installed. Once I installed the nForce 4 drivers from the CD, the boot process was extremely quick. The system seemed overall faster than before, even though I had the Raptor on my old system too. When I installed the nVidia display drivers an rebooted, a little balloon came up and said this: So I went into the nVidia control panel and found this: I went ahead and enabled SLI and told me to reboot, and when Windows loaded, another balloon came up: With SLI enabled, only the outputs of the primary video card are enabled. You should be able to do more than 2 monitors by adding a PCI video card. My Winchester CPU: Alright, lets get down what everyone wants to see, benchmarks!!! My system is in my signature, but I was running it at stock 2.2GHz when I did the test. Here is my P4?s specifications that differ from what is in my sig: P4C800-E Deluxe Pentium 4 3GHz Northwood ?C? with Hyperthreading Enabled That?s it, everything else was the same. I did benchmarks on the P4 before I upgraded. I also did benchmarks on Windows XP x64 Edition, build 12.18 with the nVidia x64 drivers, and then a set with beta nVidia drivers that enable SLI: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 15, 2005 Author Share Posted February 15, 2005 Alright, here come the benchmarks! Here is the order of Systems OS/s that I will do for each benchmark: Pentium 4 I believe Cat 4.11 A64 XP 32bit NO SLI ForceWare 66.93 A64 XP 32bit SLI ForceWare 66.93 A64 XP 64bit NO SLI ForceWare 66.93 x64 A64 XP 64bit SLI with beta drivers ForceWare 70.80 x64 First up, 3DMark01: 3DMark03: 3DMark05: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 15, 2005 Author Share Posted February 15, 2005 Alright, onto Half-Life 2/CS:S. I used the video stress test with the follow settings: Benches of HL2/CS:S: Doom 3: Settings: Doom 3 wouldn?t run with the beta drivers under that build of XP x64. I was quite surprised to see how well the normal, non-SLI drivers for x64 did, they did extremely well for just using a single 6600GT and I found that quite interesting. The Beta x64 drivers weren?t that good quality it seems as they gave me fairly bad results. As far as problems with the system, I really haven?t had any. It has been really stable, and have not been having the problems other A8N-SLI Deluxe users have been, so that was a blessing for me to do this review on the board. Overall, the system does seem most of the time just as fast as my P4, but I do notice where it does lag in multi-tasking sometimes, but most of the time it is smooth. If I was not going for a review of how SLI compared to non-SLI, I would have not bought two 6600GT?s, but a single 6800GT and got a second one later down the road, but this will suite me for quite awhile now thankfully. I think it was a good purchase to upgrade my system like this, some of you may not think so, but oh well. And that's it, BIG post =P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matrix XII Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 cool man! Looks great :p ALthough I wouldn't have gotten the Asus 6600GTs but still, thats cool :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blik Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 Nice (Y) I have that mobo, dont think I need SLI quite yet though one 6600GT is enough... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 I hate you :cry: j/k (Y) but alot of your images aren't loading dude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IK47 Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 Holy smokes! what fps do you get with CS:S stress test with 1280x1024, fullscreen, high everything, reflect all, 6xAA and 16xAF and no Vsync? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerry Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 Unparalleled effort with the images on Neowin so far (Y) Try www.iuploads.com for free image hosting. If anyone has better, bring them on ! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 Holy smokes!what fps do you get with CS:S stress test with 1280x1024, fullscreen, high everything, reflect all, 6xAA and 16xAF and no Vsync? 585477719[/snapback] DOH!! I forgot to add that!! Here is 1280x768 (my monitors max) with everything maxed to the core!! All in the one screen shot :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noll3095 Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Holy smokes!what fps do you get with CS:S stress test with 1280x1024, fullscreen, high everything, reflect all, 6xAA and 16xAF and no Vsync? 585477719[/snapback] I have an A8N-SLI and two 6600GTs, at 1280x1024 and everything maxed I get 115.70fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 I have an A8N-SLI and two 6600GTs, at 1280x1024 and everything maxed I get 115.70fps. 585479431[/snapback] Other specs, drivers, etc? nice to be vauge like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ANova Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Congradulations on wasting money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 (edited) Congradulations on wasting money. 585479608[/snapback] Thanks, and congragulations on being a total donkey. :) I really dont' care what you think, so just go somewhere else if you have nothing good to say. EDIT: And yes, I do acknowledge that SLI is not really a reasonable investment and would not really benefit a whole lot of people. I just thought it would be neat to try out, I can always sell off one of the video cards and run the system with just one, but I like to try out new technology, and this was something new to me, as I never used Voodoo 2's in SLI, being as I've only owned one Voodoo 2 before. Edited February 16, 2005 by Martog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noll3095 Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Other specs, drivers, etc? nice to be vauge like that. 585479578[/snapback] A8N-SLI Deluxe, 1004-001 BIOS A64 3500+ Winchester 1GB OCZ PC3200 2-3-3-6 2x WD 160GB (320GB total) RAID0 2x Gigabyte 6600GT 128MB Windows XP 32bit Graphics driver 71.81, all settings maxed out on CS: S; 115.70fps Happy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiB3R Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Congradulations on wasting money. 585479608[/snapback] Congrats on being a ######. What was you reason for looking at this thread? If you've got something to say then at least back it with some sort of reasoning. Don't just hit and run. And just incase you hadn't noticed, Neowin is computing enthusiast site! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dom Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Wanna give me one of those 6600? =P, nice review man! thanks!, and Congratulatinos on spending money to test a new technology, and even more, for posting a nice review :D, not many people do that :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_bearded_dope Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Great review and fantastic screenshots. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Looks good! :yes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason S. Global Moderator Posted February 16, 2005 Global Moderator Share Posted February 16, 2005 the 6600GT has proven to be a great card for the money time and time again (Y) now lets see those cards and cpu maxed out... the 6600GT overclocks a ton :yes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 A8N-SLI Deluxe, 1004-001 BIOSA64 3500+ Winchester 1GB OCZ PC3200 2-3-3-6 2x WD 160GB (320GB total) RAID0 2x Gigabyte 6600GT 128MB Windows XP 32bit Graphics driver 71.81, all settings maxed out on CS: S; 115.70fps Happy? 585480711[/snapback] Yep, you were using a different graphics driver than what I was, I kind of figured, are you overclocking at all either? That's quite a big difference in FPS. I'm just kinda of curious at the 30FPS or so difference. Wanna give me one of those 6600? =P, nice review man! thanks!, and Congratulatinos on spending money to test a new technology, and even more, for posting a nice review :D, not many people do that :o 585480971[/snapback] Thanks, I know Dazzla likes to get new toys and technology to play around with and review. :) I mean, my money, I'll spend it on with what I please. :) the 6600GT has proven to be a great card for the money time and time again (Y) now lets see those cards and cpu maxed out... the 6600GT overclocks a ton :yes: 585481477[/snapback] I'm looking at getting DDR550 (PC4400) Ram in the future to really cram up the FSB, and water cooling for the proc and graphics cards :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffeee Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 wicked system mate! Excellent review too :) thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quick Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Nice review... Is it possible to upload your 3dmark 05 screen shots to another host... I also have this board and amd 64 3500+ and 1x6600GT... And the only benchmarks i've run are 3dmark 05.. so im curious to know what you got.... Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toastyone Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 :D Nice (Y) I was wondering though can you overclock cards in a SLI setup? :unsure: Also that '03 score looks a little low, I get 12900 and I just have a 6800Ultra, I would think with two 6600GTs you would get at least 12000....maybe I am wrong :unsure: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martog Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 Nice review... Is it possible to upload your 3dmark 05 screen shots to another host... I also have this board and amd 64 3500+ and 1x6600GT... And the only benchmarks i've run are 3dmark 05.. so im curious to know what you got....Thanks 585482840[/snapback] Unfortunately, I don't know of any reliable hosting. =/ I am looking into buying a .Mac membership just for the web storage alone. Anyone good a good solution I can use? Imageshack isn't very good I see. =/ :D Nice (Y) I was wondering though can you overclock cards in a SLI setup? :unsure: Also that '03 score looks a little low, I get 12900 and I just have a 6800Ultra, I would think with two 6600GTs you would get at least 12000....maybe I am wrong :unsure: 585482889[/snapback] Actually, dual 6600GT's are supposed to be more on par with a single 6800GT, not the Ultra. Though the results varry, the dual 6600GT's generally aren't quite as good as a single 6800GT by what I have seen by other benchmarks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quick Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Unfortunately, I don't know of any reliable hosting. =/ I am looking into buying a .Mac membership just for the web storage alone.Anyone good a good solution I can use? Imageshack isn't very good I see. =/ Actually, dual 6600GT's are supposed to be more on par with a single 6800GT, not the Ultra. Though the results varry, the dual 6600GT's generally aren't quite as good as a single 6800GT by what I have seen by other benchmarks. 585483107[/snapback] Try this one... http://www.culturesnobs.com/ Restictions: * Max 2048kB per image * Only JPG, JPEG, PNG or GIF * Max 100 uploads per day per user * Max 5GB traffic per week per user * 30 days no view? > Trash * The following referer(s) are blocked: None. Not bad, it basically works till the thread dies out.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts