X-bit labs

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe Mainboard Review (page 7)

Category: Mainboards

by Yury Mitrofanov

[ 04/20/2004 | 10:14 PM ]

Performance

I guess ABIT NF7-S mainboard, one of the fastest nForce2-based products, will make a good competitor to ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe. Our tests showed that A7N8X-E Deluxe comes with an increased FSB frequency (our Athlon 3200+ processor was working at 2230MHz and 2222MHz instead of 2200MHz in two mainboards we checked out). So the testing session will be most interesting (we deal with overclocking here). The testbed was configured as follows:

• Athlon XP 3200+ CPU;
• ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, ABIT NF7-S mainboards;
• 2x256MB OCZ PC3700 DDR SDRAM;
• ATI RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card;
• Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB HDD.

We used the chipset driver version 3.13 and the graphics card driver version 3.10. The memory was working in the synchronous mode with 2-4-4-9 timings. The testbed ran under control of Windows XP SP1.

The next table shows you the performance results in various applications:

Well, ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe is a high-performing product, showing nearly the same speed as the competitor (don’t forget about the 20-30MHz advantage).

Conclusion

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe is surely a deserving product, with numerous advantages and minor drawbacks. It suits fine for home and office and gives you good overclocking opportunities. I am sure this mainboard will find its customer. It’s up to you whether you will be the one.

Highs:

• $110 price;
• Good performance and stability in the nominal operational mode;
• Rich accessories set;
• Support of IEEE 802.11b wireless networking;
• Gigabit Ethernet and SerialATA RAID;
• Audio solution on the NVIDIA APU;
• Rich expansion options.

Lows:

• You can’t increase the voltage on the chipset North Bridge;
• The range of supported memory voltages is quite narrow.