X-bit labs - Print version

Today we are going to take a closer look at one more Socket A mainboard from ASUS, based on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset. An excellent product with rich functionality and a number of unique brand name features will become an excellent choice for your Athlon XP based system.

The era of the Socket A platform is approaching its end. Once a top-end solution, it is now being ousted into home and corporative sectors by new 64-bit products from AMD. On the other hand, these sectors of the market may lack prestige, but they are profitable. That’s why manufacturers of mainboards and chipsets are in no haste to leave this business, but go on producing new things for this seemingly dying platform.

There’s also one more rule: you can’t go about selling one and the same product for too long lest the customers get bored with it and turn to other options. However excellent a product may be, the rapidly-evolving technologies make it average or even obsolete in no time. That’s roughly the reasoning for mainboard manufacturers as they launch new Socket A products.

Right now, two chipsets are largely used in Socket A mainboards: NVIDIA nForce2 and VIA KT600. ASUS also decided to rejuvenate its product range and restore its strong market positions by issuing an update to the A7N8X Deluxe. It is the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe mainboard.

Specifications and Package

The distinguishing feature of this mainboard – and its main point of difference from the predecessor – is the support of wireless networking by means an expansion Wi-Fi 802.11b card. This wireless protocol allows establishing connections with up to 11Mb/s speed. This option becomes ever more demanded by the users – ASUS is wise to offer it today. Another point of difference between the two mainboards lies in the Gigabit Ethernet controller: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe uses a chip from 3Com, while its predecessor had a controller from Marvell.

Like any other Deluxe series mainboard, this new flagship product (it should be viewed as the top-end offer from ASUS for the Socket A platform today) comes in an exclusive package:

You open the face side of the box like you do a book to read the description of the major innovation, the WLAN adapter I’ve just told you about, and to take a look at the card and the accompanying antenna. This “book” reminded me of the old LEGO set from my childhood – the designers may have wanted to emphasize that the deployment of a wireless network is as easy as building something out of LEGO parts. The software you receive with the WLAN card allows using it as a wireless access point.

What else do we see in the package? The first plastic bag contains cables (2 IDE and 1 FDD) and jumpers, the next one – 2 SATA cables and a power adapter for SATA drives. This adapter differs from analogous devices (for example, the one included with the EPoX 8RDA3+ mainboard) as we have only one adapter for two cables here rather than two adapters for two cables.

Next we extracted an I/O shield, a bracket with two USB ports and another bracket with FireWire ports. You receive some reading stuff, too. Three manuals teach you the specifics of the mainboard handling, WLAN deployment and quick installation. There are also three CDs: drivers for the mainboard, software for the Wi-Fi card and InterVideo WinDVD Suite. This is all accompanied with a sticker for the system case with the ASUS logo and another sticker that illustrates the positions of the main jumpers and connectors.

Closer Look

Let’s start with those features that distinguish this mainboard from its predecessor. As I have already mentioned, the network controller from 3Com has been replaced with an 88E8001 chip from Marvell. There is no guessing about the purpose of the change: the Marvell chip features one thing that’s very important for deploying local networks – it can diagnose and report the damages in the network cable that occur at a distance of up to 100m from the computer. This is the chip:

Owners of nForce2-based mainboards will find their old acquaintance here: a Realtek RTL8201BL chip. This is a physical-level network controller that couples with the South Bridge to provide you another network connection. Its characteristics are not very good, but satisfying for a chipset-integrated solution.

If you don’t want to have a mess of network cables around your computer, try the wireless network solution from ASUS, which consists of the WiFi slot on the mainboard, ready to accommodate the exclusive WiFi expansion card, and an antenna:

You can find a more detailed description of the WiFi technology in our article called ASUS P4P800S Mainboard on i848P Chipset and ASUS WiFi-b Kit Review. Generally speaking, wireless networking is not yet widespread because of lower data-transfer rates compared to wired connections. At the same time, it may be convenient when it’s not possible or not reasonable to run cables around.

NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset doesn’t support the SerialATA interface and ASUS made up for this deficiency by integrating a Sil3112A chip from Silicon Image into the mainboard. It supports two SerialATA devices that you can unite into a RAID array of level 0 or 1. In fact, the SerialATA interface, originally a server technology, has long ceased to be a privilege of a small number of selected mainboards only – mainboard manufactures felt that users were interested in this technology and did their best to meet their demands.

The I/O capabilities of ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe are wide-reaching: four USB 2.0/1.1 ports, one COM, one LPT, two PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard, S/PDIF connectors, line-out, line-in, mic-in, center/bass and rear out audio jacks. More connectors are found onboard – you have a lot of room for expanding the capabilities of the mainboard further: one onboard pin-connector for attaching two USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire ports, audio connectors that you can attach to the front panel of the system case, an S/PDIF input and output, a game port, a second COM and an IrDA port. I guess that’s more than enough for a computer user.

The audio subsystem of the mainboard consists of the audio processing unit (APU) in the South Bridge of the chipset and an AC’97 Realtek ALC650 DAC. This is a high-quality solution, supporting Dolby Audio technology, to the bargain. By the way, this capability should be available in all mainboards with the NVIDIA nForce2 MCP-T South Bridge, but we really see it implemented in few products since the implementation requires paying license fees. The sound is six-channel, but the most important thing about this solution is its nature: it is hardware, rather than software. In other words, we get good audio quality (comparable to modern stand-alone audio cards from Creative) and load the CPU less.

A7N8X-E Deluxe boasts three exclusive technologies from ASUS: ASUS C.O.P, ASUS Q-Fan and ASUS POST Reporter. Let’s dwell a bit more on each of them.

Real cops guarantee people’s security and public order. The CPU Overheating Protection technology serves similar purposes: it protects the heart of the PC, its central processor, from high temperatures and overheating using the on-die thermal diode. By the way, the BIOS of ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe also shows you the data from the diode integrated into the processor.

Noise has become a real problem for powerful computer system owners, particularly the noise from the CPU cooler. Of course, you can use water-cooling systems, but they are not as popular and affordable as air cooling yet. Considering that the processor is not always working at its full capacity, it’s possible to slow down the cooler for a while. ASUS Q-Fan reduces the cooler speed, and its noise, when the CPU temperature is below 50°C. You control the cooler speed in the BIOS Setup.

My first acquaintance with the POST Reporter was a kind of shock for my nerves. Leaving my room to answer a phone call, I heard someone talking there – but the room was empty when I left! There was no mystics in that, though, only advanced information technologies. The Reporter is just telling you in a human voice about the system start-up process. If something goes wrong, it lets you know about the problem. By default, the Reporter speaks English, but you can change the language to any from the list: Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Taiwanese. I can’t say anything about the other languages, but the translation into my native language, Russian, was rather poor, with some phrases simply missing. I hope the company will hire qualified interpreters in the future.

PCB Design

The first glance at the mainboard brings you a surprise: there is no 4-pin power connector for the processor. Now there will be no cables hanging over the CPU socket! On the other hand, the additional 12V power rail adds stability to the current in case of high loads. You have nothing to worry about if you’ve got a good PSU, but a low-quality PSU may not provide the necessary current stability. The 20-pin power connector is located where it should be, provoking no problems.

The NorthBridge of the chipset has a high-profile multi-ribbed passive heatsink on. The South Bridge is not covered with anything, although it might use a heatsink: the Dolby-Digital-supporting APU may make the South Bridge heat up a lot. Overheating may lead to noise distortions in the audio tract and even make your system hang up. This also means that you must modify the cooling system if you are set to conquer overclocking heights.

The fifth PCI slot is very close to the WiFi one. As a result, when you install the WLAN card, you will have only four PCI slots available. Moreover, you are likely to lose the fifth PCI slot, which is the closest to the AGP, too. The cooling system of the graphics card will probably prevent you from installing an expansion card into the first PCI slot. Considering the numerous features of the mainboard, three remaining slots should be enough, though.

The component layout is appropriate, with minor inconveniences. The connector for the CPU cooler is placed somewhat unusually, but nevertheless it is easy to access. The pin connector to which you attach buttons and LEDs of the system case is color-coded so that you could assemble the system without consulting the user manual.

Everything is in its right place. You can use the second COM port. The connectors for the system fans are where they should be. I only didn’t like the positions of the CD-in, AUX-in, COM2 and GAME/MIDI connectors. The CD-in an AUX-in are rarely used nowadays and mainboard makers put them just for the sake of having these options. The latter two connectors seem to be intended for a panel installed into the 5.25” bay, although the manual says otherwise.

To my opinion, the PCB design of ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe is user-friendly. Of course, it could have been even better, but ASUS engineers managed to avoid all basic problems. Other things are not that important.

BIOS and Overclocking

BIOSes of ASUS mainboards may seem strange for users who have got accustomed to the Award microcode, but you will get used to it soon and probably like it. Other companies simply adjust the microcode from Award for each particular mainboard, while ASUS writes its BIOSes from bottom to top, with attention to each menu item and including some extras. The code usually uses the features and unofficial capabilities of the particular chipset.

I was slightly shocked when I saw the options collected in the Advanced Chipset Features page, which control the memory timings in the User Defined mode. You seldom meet such abundance:

Basic overclocking-related options are also found in the Advanced Chipset Features page:

If you get too overwhelmed in your overclocking drive and go beyond the capabilities of your hardware, the system will either start up automatically with the default BIOS settings or wait for you to press the Ins key in the right time. By the way, we had to resort to such measures only once during our tests.

What does the BIOS of ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe lack? What does an overclocker need? Yes, we need the option of raising the voltage on the mainboard’s North Bridge. You can’t do this with ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe – that’s the point off the developers’ score.

Enough theory, now let’s turn to practice. Let’s try to overclock the thing. As usual, we are trying to reach the highest FSB frequency in the dual-channel synchronous mode. Regrettably, our ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe wasn’t willing to speed up. The maximum frequency we notched when overclocking our processor was 225MHz. We booted up the OS a couple of times at higher frequencies, but the 225MHz FSB was the maximum stable clock rate. That’s right – higher clock rates require higher voltage on the North Bridge and this mainboard doesn’t allow raising that. Note that it was really the mainboard that limited our overclocking experiments as we used overclocker DDR500 SDRAM memory and locked the AGP/PCI frequencies at their normal values since ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe supports this option.

The result of 225MHz FSB may be acceptable, though, if it were not for another problem. After working with the overclocked FSB for some time, the mainboard’s BIOS crashed. It was damaged completely, and the boot block too, leaving no hope for a simple restoration. The reanimation process was not very easy. We had to search for another mainboard like the crashed one and simply replace its BIOS chip. Then we installed the chip into the damaged mainboard and made sure that the problem was really in the damaged BIOS. Then we had to reflash the BIOS chip on the operational mainboard, using the well-known guidelines. I should confess that the corruption of the BIOS code is an often-reported problem for mainboards on nForce2 chipset. Anyway, such a problem can discourage any user, especially a beginner, from any overclocking experiments.

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:

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.

	ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe	ABIT NF7-S
Business Winstone 2002	39.3	38.2
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003	41.5	41.3
3DMark2001 SE, Default	16614	16594
3DMark03, Default	5049	5043
3DMark03, CPU Score	661	657
PCMark2004, Memory score	3040	3034
Unreal Tournament 2003, botmatch-citadel, 1024x768x32	75.58	75.63
SiSoft Sandra 2002, RAM Buffered Bandwidth	3018	3007

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.