ASUS – ASUS K8N-E Deluxe nForce3 250Gb Motherboard Review

The Athlon64 CPU however simply begs to be overclocked and only now the new motherboards based on the nForce3 250 give a real opportunity. So far the major obstacle was the non-existent PCI lock on the VIA K8T800 and nForce3 150 motherboards. The PCI bus frequency on those platforms was set to 1/6 of the FSB speed and even a small increase in the speed of the latter caused undesirable jump in the value of the former. Some nForce3 150 boards claimed to have a PCI lock, and so did the SiS 755; yet, no one could guarantee that the PCI speed was indeed locked. The situation with the AGP speed on the nVidia chipsets is different – most motherboards can enable the AGP lock from inside the BIOS setup utility. Asus K8N-E Deluxe is the third motherboard using this chipset that we review in our labs.

…If you are about to purchase an nForce3 250 motherboard and wish to overclock, you do not have much choice. If you like to have more extras, then the Asus K8N-E Deluxe is slightly cheaper than the EPoX 8KDA3+, more stable than the Gigabyte and offers some basic overclocking capabilities. We are yet to make our choice of the best nForce3 250 motherboard at least until we see the MSI solution. We are still hoping to see one from Abit as well. Meanwhile, we shall wait for the new BIOS from Asus as they have sometimes been known – just like nVidia – to make wonders out of helplessness.

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Review @ HWspirit