ASUS – ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Review @ A1 Electronics

A1-Electronics have posted a mini-review of the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe:

“The ASUS A7N8X Delux nForce2 motherboard is similar to the ASUS A7N8X which does not have Serial-ATA, dual-LAN, SoundStorm or FireWire. Both use the NVIDIA nForce2 chipset, see our NVIDIA nForce2 chipset review for full details.

With the AMD Athlon XP processor bus at 133MHz (266MHz DDR) there are no real gains by using PC2700 (DDR333) as the processor bus with only a peak bandwidth of 2.1GB/s (or PC2100) is the bottleneck. With the AMD Athlon XP bus at 166MHz (333MHz DDR) which matches the bandwidth of PC2700 at a bandwidth of 2.7GB/s the picture changes. Again PC3200 (DDR400) has a higher bandwidth of 3.2GB/s.

The Vss pin on the AMD Socket is connected to ground letting the ASUS A7N8X nForce2 BIOS automatically unlock the AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred-B multiplier settings (under XP 2700) when fitted making this an ideal AMD Athlon XP motherboard for overclocking. No need to do any work on your AMD Athlon XP processor any more. This is a feature of the NVIDIA nForce2 chipset.Back to the same question. Which AMD system motherboard to choose? How and why? For ultimate performance it would have to be this ASUS A7N8X Delux nForce2 motherboard with dual-channel and then use the latest 166MHz (333MHz) AMD Athlon XP processors or better still the Barton core version due soon. For the rest of us it really is only a matter of which motherboard gives you the extra facilities and features that you are looking for in your motherboard.

This ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard using the nForce2 chipset appeals to us because you can adjust the AMD Athlon XP multiplier setting in the BIOS like a few KT400 chipset motherboards without having to carry out any delicate modification work on your AMD Athlon XP processor with the possibility of problems. But then this ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard does not really have what we call a complete package.

We like a complete package along the lines of the Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum motherboard. Pity ASUS have not picked up on this trend more. It makes life a lot easier to buy one complete product than having to hunt around for the extras.

Other than that this ASUS A7N8X Delux nForce2 motherboard is well made, stable, super performance AMD system motherboard with a complete range of overclocking options in the BIOS. What more could you want.“

Full review @ a1-electronics.co.uk