X-bit labs

Dressed to Kill: ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Mainboard Review (page 9)

Category: Mainboards

by Alexey Stepin

[ 12/28/2005 | 12:08 PM ]

Performance in Theoretical Benchmarks

Futuremark PCMark05 build 110

The difference between the overall performance scores of the two platforms based on the two different mainboards is a mere 81 points or less than 2%. Alas, the difference is not in favor of the new mainboard from ASUS and the nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset.

If we put aside the architectural deficiencies of the new chipset, particularly the narrow HyperTransport channels between the CPU and the North Bridge, some imperfections in the BIOS and the overall mainboard design may account for that. We can recall our testing the early implementations of NVIDIA’s SLI platform in silicon when we also met a number of problems that were later successfully solved as the platform matured. Let’s take a look at the results of CPU and Memory tests – will they give us an answer?

The diagram shows that the performance of the CPU on the A8N-SLI Premium and the A8N32-SLI Deluxe mainboards is absolutely the same and the difference of 12 points is most likely due to a measurement error. We suppose that the test doesn’t load the CPU-chipset line very heavily and the narrowness of the appropriate HyperTransport channels in the nForce4 SLI X16 chipset doesn’t show up.

All modern processors from AMD come with an integrated memory controller, so the results are quite natural, even though the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe scores 51 points less than the older mainboard.