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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: nForce4 Overview At One Glance The Bundle Layout, VRM 20:32 PCI Lanes Audio, Network and BIOS Test Setup, nTune Memory Performance / Conclusions Your Comments Can Help Us Improve Our Reviews
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Mother's finest SLI
(Review by MS, April 3, 2005)

Among the first to market with the nForce4 SLI chipset was ASUS with their A8N-SLI. Packing a full punch of features along with the almost proverbial ASUS quality, the A8N-SLI is a mainboard geared especially towards the high-end gaming community. We have been running the A8N-SLI in the Deluxe version for about 3 months in a variety of system configurations from single card to SLI without encountering anything that could be considered a weakness. Dual Gigabit LAN, dual channel memory, the possibility to hook up more SATA and PATA drives than any case could possibly hold, in other words, an abundance of everything would be an appropriate description of the board and its bundle. The only weakness is the onboard sound that still works for the gamer but there are better solutions on the market.

There are still a few little changes that we suggest, some of the features, especially in the SLI configuration don't really make sense and add unnecessary complexity to the design and cost to the manufacturing process that the end-user has to pay without really getting anything in exchange. Find out more ..

There is no question that PCI Express is here to stay for both Intel and AMD platforms. For the Socket 939, the nForce4 family of chipset appears the solution of choice and has consequently established a solid dominance in the market. Overall there are three different variations, starting with the basic nforce4 chipset over the nForce4 Ultra and finally the nForce4 SLI version. The nForce4 and the nForce4 Ultra both do not support SLI out of the box, early chipset revisions could be modified by closing two bridges on the chipset substrate, however, in newer date codes of the chipset, nVidia has drawn the consequences by redesigning the package, thereby mitigating the possibility to “upgrade” the Ultra version to enable SLI. Additional differences in the between the different chipset members center on the feature set – SATA 1.5 vs. SATA 3.0 and NVIDIA ActiveArmor vs. Firewall to mention two of the hilights of the monolithic core logic.

The detailed descriptions of the individual features are given in more or less gory detail on the nVidia website, including the necessary white papers but for starters, we are going to list the manufacturer’s information as overview:

	SLI-ready for extreme performance Supports two NVIDIA SLI-ready graphics cards for scalable performance. NVIDIA nForce4 SLI MCPs include dedicated SLI hardware to maximize gaming performance
	Technologically advanced PCI Express Designed to run with the next-generation PCI Express graphics cards and other devices. Supports two PCI Express graphics slots and three x1 PCI Express expansion slots. This new bus delivers over 4GBps in both upstream and downstream data transfers
	Unmatched security: NVIDIA ActiveArmor Dedicated hardware-based secure networking engine that protects your PC from hackers and spyware the minute it is turned on and filters out any unauthorized or suspicious traffic. Protects against a wide range of attacks including IP-spoofing and ARP cache poisoning. Easy to set up and fast to configure, ActiveArmor offers remote secure access, monitoring, and configuration for management.
	Advanced storage = NVIDIA RAID technology Unique support for four SATA and four ATA-133 drives. RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1 support, enabling fast disk data transfers. Allows RAID arrays across both SATA and PATA hard drives and provides advanced features like the NVIDIA disk alert system that immediately alerts you if a drive fails, and dedicated spare disks that will automatically rebuild if a failed hard drive is detected.
	Future proof your PC with SATA 3 Gb/s Support for the industry’s latest drive technology. Doubles hard drive bus bandwidth for blazingly fast disk performance
	Faster download and transfer times with NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet Delivers one the highest throughputs for fast network transfers and lowers CPU utilization. Runs 10/100/1000 Ethernet up to full Gigabit speeds. TCP/IP task offloading eliminates network bottlenecks and improves overall system efficiency and performance
	The ultimate system application: NVIDIA nTune Enables one of the safest and easiest ways to optimize PC performance. Faster than tuning by hand, nTune delivers optimal settings for bus speeds, HyperTransport, memory timings, CPU registers, fans, and voltages in a safe, easy-to-use Microsoft® Windows® interface. Provides the ability to overclock system settings without entering the BIOS or changing hardware jumpers.

To make a long story short, the only reason to go with the SLI version of the chipset is to run an actual SLI configuration. The verdict on SLI is still not in, my personal opinion is that SLI is a sweet technology but others beg to differ, primarily based on the understanding that only a few games at present support SLI. On the other hand, the principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been and will continue to be applications created by that new technology, in other words, if you build it, they will come.

ASUS was one of the first, if not the first manufacturer to come out with an actual board featuring SLI support, namely the A8N SLI and – in typical ASUS fashion – the high-end Deluxe version. There are other boards out there by now, manufactured by MSI, DFI and a variety of other manufacturer’s and every brand has its own little extras thrown in, trying to stick out from the crowd.

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