ASUS A8N SLI DELUXE: Athlon 64 on steroids! - Updated

Author's Rating:

Pros: Feature-rich, nForce4 chipset, layout, high performance, PCI-Express, SLI capable, dual RAID

Cons: Expensive, no AGP slot, marginal documentation, terrible technical support

The Bottom Line: 
Looking for a great platform for 2005/2006 with limited technical support? This motherboard will fit the bill!

Author's Review
With Microsoft getting ready to release Windows XP Prof. 64 sometime this year (2005), the 64 bit craze is about to get even hotter and AMD's Athlon 64 processor is a great alternative to Intel's aging P4 line. Even without the 64 bit operating system, AMD received recognition of their Athlon 64 processors which also work just fine with 32 bit applications. So this may be a good time to consider changing your mind to 'Intel outside'?

The ASUS A8N-SLI is currently one of the most powerful motherboards available for the Athlon platform. It's pricey and sounds great, but is it worth the money?


MAIN FEATURES

Deluxe: The A8N SLI comes in 2 variations and the 'Deluxe' packs two more professional features than the regular version and is geared towards enterprise applications. The A8N-SLI Deluxe has an Silicon Image 3114R SATA controller (extra four ports) in addition to the four SATA devices that are supported by the nForce4 chipset whereas A8N-SLI does not. Most users never fill the first set of 4 SATA HDDs and don't have to worry about an extra four or RAID just yet. Moreover, the A8N-SLI Deluxe supports an additional Giga LAN controller and the A8N-SLI only supports one Giga LAN provided by the nForce4 chipset.

Other than that, the features read like a computer enthusiast's wishlist in 2005:

- AMD Socket 939 (Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64)
- nVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset
- Single PCI-Express x16 Architecture or
- SLI (Dual PCI-Express x8)
- Supports SATA II (3 Gbps)
- 2 independent SATA controllers (2x 1.5 Gbit/s)
- Dual RAID (RAID 0, 1, 0 1, 5, 10 and JBOD)
- Dual Gigabit LAN
- nVIDIA Firewall (hardware)
- AI NOS (Non-delay Overclocking System)
- AI Audio (8-channel Audio) w/ "Jack Sensing" and "UAJ"
- ASUS Q-Fan (controls CPU fan and chassis fan speed)
- Two IEEE 1394 ports
- Max. 10 USB 2.0 ports (480Mbit/s)
- S/PDIF-out (SONY-PHILIPS Digital Interface)

For more detail on the features, please refer to
- http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8nsli-d/overview.htm


INSTALLATION - HARDWARE

The A8N-SLI Deluxe is compatible with the ATX form factor which should fit any current ATX case. Installation from that side is somewhat standardized and the motherboard didn't put up too much of a fight once the first hurdle was taken. What hurdle? ...

Power to the E-ATX: The A8N SLI Deluxe requires an E-ATX power plug (24 pins) which is an extended version of the popular ATX plug (20 pins) used for Pentium 4. Given that even my new case (Thermaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA) did not have the proper plug, I decided to fashion my own adapter from the unused P6 plug. It holds all the required voltages (Red=5V, Yellow=12V, Orange=3.3V, Black=GND) to occupy the bottom 4 contacts of the E-ATX connector. Be advised that this is not a recommended procedure for everyone as it involves some modifications of the PSU! (EATX is also referred to as ATX 12V 2.0.) Alternatively, ASUS' FAQ notes that: "Users don't need to buy a 24-pin PSU when they setup a SLI system. A high-wattage 20-pin PSU will work just fine." The included manual provides little to no information regarding alternatives.

SLI Problem: I first installed this board in my old case (Ahanix dBox), but the upper PCI-e slot happens to be in the upmost slot of the dBox case which has not enough room for the DVI-D connector to fit in straight. (The upper PCI-e slot must be populated first.) One can force the plug in, but be aware that this puts a lot of pressure on the connector and may result in mechanical failue of the VGA board. The Thermaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA provides clearance for at least the DVI-D plug and suits this application much better.

PCI-e VGA: Speaking of video cards, given that the board is just out and SLI is currently supported only by nVidia based boards (6600 & 6800), ASUS lists those as compatible video cards. Granted, PCI-e currently limits selection greatly, but it's still surprising that no ATI PCI-e board is listed. Nevertheless, I tried an x800Pro and it worked fine for about 6 days. Then the 'mobo' started talking to me: "System failed VGA test". That was pretty much the indication for a great graphics card gone bad. The replacement x800 is currently under tight surveilance and I will update if something happens.

Fasteners: The mechanical installation of the 'mobo' is a snap since all 8 screw positions (to hold it in the case) are freely accessible even with CPU and RAM already installed. However, watch out which screws you use since neither motherboard nor case go into too much detail and the Thermaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA comes with a lot of similar screws. The ones that fit the studs for the motherboard are the ones with the hex/phillips head!

Memory: ASUS currently lists only DDR memory with frequencies at 266, 333 and 400 MHz as compatible. The BIOS allows even more, but given the expense associated with 1 GByte of high performance RAM, I just stuck with the HyperX DDR400 from Kingston. By default, the clock will be at 333MHz if four DDR400 memory modules are use. The timing in AUTO setup is also very conservative and despite my memory being guaranteed at 2-3-2-6-1 the A8N SLI determined 2.5-3-3-7-2 to be safe. This is only good for about 4.8 GB/sec of data transfer. The nForce4 chipset has little impact on the memory management as this is handled by the AMD cpu which runs at an impressive 95% efficiency.
Standard memory definition: CAS-rRCD-tRP-tRAS-CMD

BIOS: Tuning the Bios settings turned out to be a reading excercise since the order and naming of the parameters appears a little cryptic at first and overwhelming. It also doesn't help that the BIOS lists the memory timing parameters in a different order. Once complete, the data transfer reached 6.4 GB/sec and I was quite satisfied. Overall it can be a little confusing with the Sil RAID SATA controller showing up in one place and the 'on-board' SATA controller in another. Other than that, the Award BIOS offers great flexibility and can be updated via Floppy upon boot or directly from within Windows. The backup of the BIOS in not onboard as seen with my previous Gigbyte SINXP but relies on a copy saved on a floppy disc. (Use BIOS 1004 to have timing parameters listed with codes as seen below.)
BIOS memory param. order: CMD-CAS-tRCD-rRAS-tRP

SATA: It's very easy to add SATA drives to the four SATA ports that are directly controlled by the nForce4, and the same is true for the additional SATA controller. However, be aware that transferring a ATA boot drive to SATA can be tricky. On the positive side, all SATA's are hot-swapable and can be removed or added with the system running. Of course that doesn't make too much sense for the system disk.

S.M.A.R.T.: The A8n SLI impresses with a lot of features that help identifying hardware errors. Not only is there a TDR integrated which allows to pinpoint Ethernet cable issues via Marvell Virtual Cable Tester utility. More important for everyday usage may be the Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) that monitors supported hard drives for typical parameters like Head Flying Height, Number of Remapped Sectors, ECC Use and Error Counts, Spin-Up Time, Temperature, and Data Throughput. For more detail please refer to ...
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/qual/featuresSMART.html)

Future Proof: Currently socket 939 appears to be AMD's most popular version that has a chance to be used for years to come. Upcoming dual core processors will be available for socket 940 (Opteron) and socket 939 sometime mid to end of 2005. Hence, not only do you have dual everything in the A8N SLI already, the dual core processor will give it power for years to come. However, it sure will not be cheap for a while. (Note for Dual GPU fans: ATI's CrossFire may not be supported by SLI for quite a while if ever, hence the A8N SLI is nVidia only territory.)
http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_11787,00.html?redir=CPPA65


INSTALLATION - SOFTWARE

Plug'n'Play? With about 60 GByte in applications and games installed, I wanted to minimize my efforts and tried to simply plug the old hard drive into the new motherboard. Well with chances being slim due to the completely different architecture (nForce vs. SIS, AMD vs. Intel) but worth a try anyway. (However, I made back-up before starting this whole exercise.)

Repair: As expected, my system locked up during boot. Alright, let's try the repair function of WindowsXP, since in my little world that should replace the 'wrong' drivers and configuration with the correct version. Wrong! In a nutshell, the only solution I came up with was to format my drive and install XP from scratch. Get ready for a series of reboots and typing in serial numbers (for XP and most of the applications I own). Ohhh those hours of joy ...

32 or 64? First I installed the 32bit version of XP, and then I tried WindowsXP 64bit as an alternative installation (multi-boot) on another HDD. The 64bit is currently only as Beta available and until it's released I am not planning on fully switching over. (Mostly due to necessary drivers and sofware updates.) However, during testing it turned out to be very stable already and most programs ran without any problem. Major speed increase is not expected, but to my surprise, Sandra 2005 returned a 4MB/s higher benchmark for my Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10k SATA. (XP: 58MB/s avg - XP64: 62MB/s avg) ATI's 'Catalyst64 Beta4' seemed right on target compared to Catalyst 5.2 as well. Nevertheless, Norton's system tools are currently not compatible and deny installation. I am relying on those for security and will wait until all that has been fixed.

Updates: With WinXP freshly installed, it was necessary to load the drivers from the included ASUS disk in order to fully activate the chipset's functionality. I.e. the Ethernet port may not be functioning and prevent internet access via DSL or Cable modem until the driver has been installed and rebooted. Now that the system seemed to work, I went ahead and dowloaded all updates for both WinXP and Asus drivers and so on. This is a lengthy process since WinXP alone requires about 260 Mbyte of downloads which are sequenced into 4 parts that require rebooting inbetween. The whole process takes the good part of two hours. (Of course you could just dish out another $100 to buy the XP disks with SP2 included.)

Technical Support: The good organized website made me hope for more and so far I posted 3 questions directly related to the function and setup of the board and not a single one has been answered yet ... 10 days after the fact. So I set out to find the answers myself and user forums are a great resource but only covered 1 out of 4 problems. Hence, I am still left in the dark with 3!!! :-( Considering how new some of the technology in this board is (SATA, nForce4, PCI-E, SLI ...) this is not a plug'n'play motherboard per se, and one can expect some time until all bugs are ironed out. This is where the A8N looses big time with technical support that's virtually non-existent. The same applies to the documentation regarding special features.


PERFORMANCE - WHERE THE FUN STARTS

Now that everything is in good working order, it's time to harvest the fruits of the 3 - 4 hours of hard labor to set the system up and debugg. Granted, some of the kudos go to the graphics card, but overall speed improvement over my old Gigabyte SINXP1394 motherboard with a P4 2.4GHz CPU and DDR333 RAM is very visible. The HDD controller seems more efficient too and boot time reduced greatly even with the old ATA drives.

I will spare you extensive repetitions of benchmark tests, as I am sure you may have seen those professional reviews on www.tomshardware.com or www.motherboards.org. If not, now you know where to look. ;-)

I was already pretty happy with my old components, but still added a Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10k SATA hard drive and 1 GByte of Kingston HyperX low latency RAM (2-3-2-6-1). The AMD Athlon 64 3500 processor virtually grew wings with this tweak. It may not be the absolute performance peak in 2005 but excellent when taking the price for mobo and cpu into consideration. ($450 in total)

With all the immediate performance boost, the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe has plenty room to grow. When time comes I may jump onto the SLI and add another SATA 10k drive to create a RAID array for improved data security and speed. The memory can also be upgraded to 4 GByte and so on and so forth. Lots of room for new 'projects'.

Overclocking is an easy way to get slightly more performance than the components are rated for. Despite the aggressive memory timing of 2-3-2-6-1, I was still able to overclock the processor to 108% (and only failed stress tests at 110%.) ... quite impressive and a sign of high-quality components. The AI NOS application allows to switch between normal and overclocking depending on the needs. For instance, if the program registers high CPU usage for a sustained amount of time, it will automatically shift gears and overclock and ultimately return to normal speed when the usage drops. Excellent!

Case: Termaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA
Monitor: Viewsonic VP201s
Motherboard: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR400 (C2), 1 GByte
Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 74G SATA 10k
Operating System: WindowsXP Home SP2
Video Driver: Catalyst 5.2 (Radeon driver 8.10)
Chipset Driver: nVidia nForce v6.39
Graphics card: MSI RX800Pro-TD256E


AN AFTER-THOUGHT

So why spend almost $200 on a motherboard if you can get a good nForce4 board already for less than $140? Well, future is not that easy to predict but with the PCIe bus just catching on, it can be easily forseen that it will be the AGP of the next 4 - 5 years. SLI is very new and right now simply expensive and only supported by topranking nVidia's GForce 6800 SLI and 6600 SLI. As time goes by, SLI will provide an easy albeit expensive way to increase graphics performance by 70 - 80% by simply doubling graphics boards. So if you should get lucky to afford two top-notch graphics cards, the bragging rights will sure be on your side!

But even without SLI, the nForce4 chipset is brand-new and provides enough power for upcoming Athlon 64 FX processors and should make this investment future-proof for at least 2 - 3 years. Since memory management is done by the CPU, upcoming processors may even provide support for DDR2 without switching motherboards. As long as AMD sticks to Socket 939, you will be fine. Given the expected hype around 64bit for 2005 and 2006 the Athlon 64 will be interesting enough for many applications and the A8N-SLI along with it.

One exception may be the form-factor. The upcoming BTX size is optimized for cooling and allows for less effort (read cooling fans) and ultimately quieter computers and maybe a little more room for overclocking. Other changes are not expected from the format change.

CAUTION: 'Brand new' also means lots of unproven technology and as I am trouble shooting some of the enhanced features, I ran into several problems described in user forums that mainly deal with the SATA and PCI-e SLI. To debug an A8N requires quite some background knowledge and is not recommended for everybody. I would let it go by if documentation and technical support were helpful, but at the current state of the art they might as well be considered absent. Hence, one star comes off due to that!


TROUBLESHOOTING

Given the lack of usable technical support by Asus, I will gather in this section problems that I ran into and how they were solved (if there is a solution).

Problem: USB controller only as v1.1 recognized
Asus feedback: clear CMOS and try SP1 instead of SP2
Solution: Install WinXP SP1 (SP2) first before installing any of the nVidia nForce4 chipset drivers. If that failed, update the driver manually and let Windows find it online.

Problem: Cannot boot from stand-alone SATA
Asus feedback: Load SATA driver during install
WD feedback: DataLifeGuard11 not compatible with SATA.
Solution: Indeed DataLifeGuard and other HDD configuration tools did not recreate the boot partion correctly on the SATA drive. (OS not placed within Block 1250 which seems to make the drive unbootable.) Let Windows create the partition while installing the OS to make sure the boot condition is correctly created and the OS is placed first. (Once that's done you can restore your backup into that partition, which worked fine after repairing the 'restored' drive.)

Problem: No post, Error: "System Failed VGA Test"
Asus feedback: clean contacts or replace VGA
MSI feedback: need 450W power supply
Solution: Video card (MSI RX800Pro TD-256E) was defective (only 6 days old). Replacement was provided promptly by ZipZoomFly.com.

Problem: FSB set to only 800 MHz
Asus feedback: n/a
Solution: The Bios (1003) defaults to 800MHz, change the HT speed in the bios to 5x to enable 1000MHz FSB.

Problem: BackItUp NRESTORE.exe fails w/ EMM386 error
Nero feedback: This is apparently a DR-DOS issue with AMD's Athlon processors. Nero's BackItUp uses this to boot from a disk created by backing up a whole drive. To bypass this, use XP install disk to boot and enter repair mode. Change to the drive with backup file (disk#1) and execute nrestore.exe manually.

n/a ... not available


© 2005, theuerkorn