SLI x16 negligible benefits over SLI x8

"We initially started out by conducting tests at only 0X and 4X AA however looking at the benchmarks in the previous pages, we really didnt see any difference at all. We contacted nVidia about this and they suggested doing tests using 8X and 16X AA and thus we went back and benched all four games using that setting as well. Besides Quake4, we really do not see the X16 posting higher results in anything else. In fact, Serious Sam 2 and Call of Duty 2 consistently showed the older nForce4 SLI performaing better in most of the benchmarks.

That being said, we recently asked DFI why their latest limited Venus series of nForce4 boards was not based on the X16 chipset and we were told that the Venus board would produce results equal to or even faster than an X16 board. Also keep in mind that ATI has the faster solution with the x1900 and Crossfire at the moment and neither ATI nor Intel is making any noise about requiring anything above than an X8 slot.

We're not saying that X16 doesnt provide the bandwidth it promises. It sure does, but we think that two x16 slots are a bit of an overkill- at least for the current generation of graphics cards. Its time will come when graphics cards get fast enough to require that much bandwidth but we really don’t see that happening too soon and by that time, we're sure that two x16 slots will pretty much be the standard in all motherboards"

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/articl...&pagenumber=12

Guess its better to buy an Asus A8N Premium rather than the AN8-32....

I geuss the only treason you would get it was if the bios had better overclocking or something like that, as with the premium [2*8x] compared to the deluxe. Although I dont like that tactic, pay for the pointless feature to get something usefull that should be in the next model down, to me its like the pay for next daay or we won't dispatch for a week tactic that some etailers use

Yes, for the time being.

Just as AGP 8x is more than fast enough and PCI isn't required. *shrugs*

Kinda silly for nV to waste all that money designing the new chipset if that's all it has to offer. They've kind of "devolved" back to a 2-chip core logic as well, which I guess is expensive for them... silly company!

Suman