A8N SLI Motherboard(s) questions

[dpriest]

the a8n-sli can only give 16x to one pci-e slot or 8x in sli. However from what I have seen in reviews it makes little or not difference

Apparently only the Nvidia 7800 GTX 512 cards will be able to make use of all the bandwidth the two 16x slots can give.

[JonSt]

As YorkieBen said, every review I have read did not mention much about the increased bandwith. Some mentioned it, but didn't exactly sound over the moon about it.

[dpriest]

***Was a really well put together post here - but then realised I was replying about a completely different board***

It's late, I need beer, sorry!

Is it possible to delete your own posts? I can only see an edit option....

[YorkieBen]

Apparently only the Nvidia 7800 GTX 512 cards will be able to make use of all the bandwidth the two 16x slots can give.

nvidia would say that wouldnt they

[dpriest]

Yeah, fair point! :-)

More here on bit-tech though, where they've done some comparisons
with a system with both 16 pipes working:
http://www.hothardware.com/viewartic...leid=739&cid=3

... seems to favour frame rates rather than GPU processes, and there's a
reply from Nick Stam:

""You may see better scaling at 1x/1x (AA /AF) on x16 vs x8 SLI due to a few reasons, in descending order of most impact.

1) The higher frame rates obtained at 1x/1x (or even at lower resolution) actually requires more data to be exchanged between the two GPU cards across PCIe per unit time (more frames per second means the cards must exchange data more frequently). Resolution variations actually don't have as much impact across PCIe as the increased frame rates do in the GPU-GPU exchanges over PCIe. While much data does exchange through the SLI bridge connector, there is still some data that goes across PCIe between GPUs.

2) With higher frame rates, the CPUs can now pump more data across PCIe to the GPUs.

Future scenarios with lots more geometry being passed to GPUs, a lot more textures, SLI-AA, and so on, will see more improvements over time."

Full article and test results at Bit-Tech:
http://www.hothardware.com/viewartic...leid=739&cid=3

[FatalSaviour]

inverted you mean fan at the top?????

The blower fan that attaches to the cooler of the heatpipe is at the top of a case, near the CPU fan in a normal configuration, to disperse the most heat. Therefore, it will be at the bottom of the case in an inverted configuration, blowing precious little heat away...

[FatalSaviour]

No, it can only supply x8 to each slot when in sli,it can supply x16 when using the one gfx. The a8n32-sli can supply x16 to each slot when in sli, hence the 32

This is right. Also, noone seems to have mentioned that this board overclocks damn well...
I've owned the A8N-SLI Deluxe, RMA'd it, got this, and I'll never look back...I'm well impressed with it...apart from my wireless card not playing with it for some reaso...