A8N32-SLI or A8N-SLI for this system.

[soma520]

After standing in a stupor at Fry's Electronics, i finally took a A8N32-SLI Deluxe home, installed and booted it up.. At first it gave me the ACPI issue, then it would simply restart everytime it hit windows. I'm thinking this was either a memory issue or not a good enough power supply.

After taking the MB back, I now don't know if I need the latest and greatest board for what i have.

The other components I have right now are AMD 64 3500 and Geforce 6600 GT OC.

I was wondering if the extra transfer rate when i add another 6600 in a few months when i get the money really affect the performance of my system. I also plan on putting 2GB of ram into the machine, but was sold DDR2 ram instead of DDR, so i dont have that yet either.

So my question is, is it worth the 100 bux to get the true 16bit on each video card or is it a waste with the system i am going to use.

 

[kolemunky]

a8n32 is a great overclocker, but as far as the dual x16 its a joke. every review ive read shows this board with lower fps than the a8n-sli. Maybe in the future a VC might use this extra bandwidth, but i doubt it.

 

[Vascular]

Waste of money right now for the A8N32-sli. 16x per lane is so overkill any video card on the market wont even see a restriction with 8x.
Was it Fry's who sold you the DDR2, because it wouldnt supprise me if they did.
Unless you are playing some new games BF2, Fear or encoding would you see a performance increase with 2gigs.

With the price difference between the two boards plus the cost of another 6600gt I would buy a 7800gt since it out performs the sli 6600.

 

[soma520]

Yes it was Fry's that sold me the DDR2, which after reading some reviews i'm not too surprised either.

So are you saying that a single 7800gt would outperform 2 linked 6600gt's?

The most taxing game i play right now is WoW where the fps plummets if there is a lot going on with my current 5200.

My main purpose with the new upgrades was to get a system with a better video card that i could easily upgrade in a year by just adding some ram and linking in another video card.

As you can tell, I have limited experience building my own computer so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the responses so far, keep them coming.

 

[Ots]

A year ago I built an SLI system with two 6600gt's and a 3500+.

It was after I built it I realized how silly this was. Buying a premium SLI board and taking it only half way down the road with components. There was no point buying it unless I intended to max its capabilities.

There are a lot good boards that will host a 3500+ and a 6600GT and perform very well. Especially if you're playing WoW. I haven't seen benchmarks but I bet the comment made by the other person is correct. A single 7800 GT or GTX will do as well or even out-perform dual 6600GT's.

I went ahead and threw the dough at my SLI board and it is very fast and has great graphics. But when I'm doing stuff to it and want to play WoW, for example, my back-up system is a 3500+ and 6600Gt and it plays fine.

 

[soma520]

Thanks for the responses guys, I've learned a lot.

I've decided to go with the 7800GT from BFG (right now for $300 at comp usa) and the ASUS A8N-SLI or the ABIT equivalent.

Again thanks for the help.

 

[specter]

My advice for you is to go with Asus. I had some Abit motherboards and I had problems with all of them. I now own an Asus motherboard and works very well, as did the other Asus board i've had. Asus all the way. the best is Asus A8N-Sli Premium.

 

[Armageddon]

My advice for you is to go with Asus. I had some Abit motherboards and I had problems with all of them. I now own an Asus motherboard and works very well, as did the other Asus board i've had. Asus all the way. the best is Asus A8N-Sli Premium.

Don't mean to start off on a negative note, but I have to disagree with your sentiments about ASUS. My last two purchases, A8N-SLI, and A8N32-SLI, qualify as the worst motherboards I've ever had. Major installation problems (constant re-booting as with the one that started this thread), non-ACPI compliant BIOS messages (what the hell is that?), unable to solve conflicts in safe mode because system WOULDN'T boot in safe mode,
Nvidia network cards that don't work, and when they do, corrupt large downloads, hardware firewall that won't uninstall, IDE transfer corruption problems (more so with larger files), BIOS updates (1009) that kill the boot sector of your hard drive resulting in re-installation, and absolutely HORRIBLE long distance charging tech support!
ASUS couldn't hold Gigabyte's jockstrap when it comes to quality and tech support. BIG mistake buying anything from this useless company again, and now I'm stuck with this crappy Mobo.

 

[Vascular]

Nvidia would have you believe it is an upgrade path, but as fast as they change product lines you would be hard pressed to find the exact same video card a year later. SLI at this point is more for people who want the fastest set up around and are willing to buy it all at once.

 

[specter]

I said Asus A8N-SLI Premium...not deluxe or other. Many of those problems that u had may be from nvidia chipset or drivers because i had a lot of problems with them too.