InfiniteMac OSx86 - View Single Post - Socket 939: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe / Asus A8N-SLI Premium

naquaada · 06-10-2008, 05:24 PM

I'm also no big overclocking fan, but I tested it and it works fine with the Premium board. With good overclocking options you can f.e. lower your CPU voltage, this means the processor won't create so much heat - even if you don't overclock it. The boot pause is as following: Normal prodedure after power on is beeping, little memory test, detecting hardware, showing components as usual. But then you have a boot pause from 9...0 with the message 'Press Esc to continue booting' which is fully unneccessary and I never saw on another board ever.
Another thing is the bad positioning of the 2 PCI-E slots. In the A8N32-SLI the slots are set in this order: PCI, PCI-E x16, PCI, PCI, PCI-E x16, PCI-E x4

On the Asus A8N-SLI Premium it's PCI, PCI, PCI, PCI-E x16, PCI-E x8, PCI-E x1, PCI-E x16

The most gfx card need two Slots at the back side (especially if they are passive), so you'll always lose one PCI-slot on the A8N-32SLI, if you use two you lose two. On the Premium you don't lose a PCI slot, only a PCI-E x1 slot. Oly by use of 2 gfx cards you'll use one slot. On the Premium is the Airflow better using 2 cards because they are not so tight together. The only difference - The Premium board reduces in SLI mode (with 2 nvidia SLI-compatible gfx cards) the PCI-E bus with of PCI-E 16x to PCI-E 8x, so it's PCI-E 16x in total. The A8N-32SLI Deluxe provides full PCI-E 32x in SLI mode. But I don't know if you need this. MacOS doesn't support SLI.

I always would recommend the premium board, I got the Deluxe as a gift to my Opteron 185 processor. I have three, a friend has also two or three, two other friends have each one, and another friend also has one and a cheaper variant of it, the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (without heatpipe and some other differences).