ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard

ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard  Price: Yet to be launched Key Specs: X32 SLI, 4 SATA slots, 4 USB 2.0, 2 Gb LAN, 8 channel audio Contact: ASUSTek India, Mumbai. Tel: 50058928. Email: rahul_jain@asus.com.tw RQS# E54 or SMS 131254 to 9811800601

Citius, Altius, Fortius. Faster, higher, stronger-sum up
this motherboard from ASUS. With this board, ASUS has implemented NVIDIA's new
solution where each graphics slot runs at X16 speed giving you the full X32
bandwidth. Its build quality is top notch and it's very fast. ASUS positions
it as a gaming board and that's what we tested it for. We ran our suite of
benchmarks from Doom 3 to Serious Sam 2nd encounter, and got  stellar
performance. The test bed was our regular Athlon X2 4800+, 1 GB DDR 400, 2x
7800GT 256 MB and a 120 GB Seagate SATA drive.

The 3DMark 2005 gave a thumping score of 11,000+. It gave
an okay sore of 52.3 with the MCCW test-good performance for a gaming board.
Note that even our high-end motherboard winner (page 100, PCQuest,

October 2005) MSI P4N Diamond scored 57.3.

With Doom 3, it scored a good 106.4 at 1600x1200 with all
graphics settings cranked up (AA and AF switched on to full, vsync switched
off). Even with the effects of Far Cry set at maximum, we managed a stunning
85.4 fps at 1600x1200! And a similar result of 83.4 fps for Splinter Cell Chaos
Theory.

The board crunched through opponents, gun-fire and
continuously changing lighting conditions with lots of splintering glass and
water effects in Serious Sam II, returning a solid 80 fps. But we were a bit
surprised since the board came with pretty standard features (apart from the
high performance capability!) It has four memory slots supporting a total of 4
GB DDR400 RAM, four USB ports (supports a total of ten via connectors) 8 channel
RealTek audio, coax and optical S/PDIF as well as dual Gigabit LAN (NVIDIA and
Marvell). It features the trademark ASUS fan-less cooling solution which coupled
with a big coolermaster fan kept the system chugging along at an unbelievable 40
degrees!

Bottom Line: All in all, if you want the best gaming board
out there, this is it.

Varun Dubey