Socket 754 Roundup, Part 3: Asus, Soltek & DFI
by Wesley Fink on September 14, 2004 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Workstation Performance
The Soltek K8AN2E-GR does very well in the SPECviewperf Suite. The DFI is particularly uneven in the workstation benchmarks, which is most likely a reflection of the tweaks that have been done to achieve the remarkable overclocking it exhibits. The Asus K8N-E falls somewhere between these extremes.
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Term - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Uhm.. the new ASUS bios fix the OC stability problem with SATA right?Wesley Fink - Saturday, September 18, 2004 - link
#34 - The Asus K8N-E manual does state 3MB of memory as the maximum capacity. The specifications have been corrected in the review.LocutusX - Thursday, September 16, 2004 - link
Daxzus,For more accurate "real-world advice" concerning the K8N-E, please see the unofficial thread for that mobo at the Anandtech forums. There are people there who have been using it extensively for the last 2 months, who have tried a wide variety of components/overclocking on it.
justly - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#27 – WesleyThank you for the explanation about your testing methodology, now I feel more comfortable knowing that you do check for these minor deviations when comparing new products against older ones.
#28 – Wesley (again)
I agree about it being a shame that SiS seems to always get dumped on by big name motherboard manufactures and that even when a good product hits the street it seems to get forgotten about or overlooked. The thing is I still think you are just as guilty as many others reviewers. If you don’t understand what I mean then just look at #32 (by PrinceGaz) since I would have said the EXACT same thing.
This might be a little arrogant of me, but would it really hurt to mention their product when talking about a section of the market that they perform so well in (non-overclockers).
Daxzus - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
also...I was wondering if anyone has a good powersupply and case that might work good for me for a good price.Daxzus - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
I read every thing that was in the review about the 3 diffrent motherboards and I have some questions.In the review it was said that the Asus K8N-E deluxe maxed out at 2GB of memory, but at newegg and some all the other places I can buy it from-and even Asus homepage, say that the Asus K8N-E deluxe has a max of 3GB of memory. What this in error in the reveiw or am I looking at buying the wrong board?
Also I was thinking about buying the Asus K8N-E deluxe and I have a college budget and I was wanting to get some recomendation as to some really good cheap memory to get for it. Also maybe some good budget video cards. I saw that in the review that ATI 9800 was used...wouldn't a Nvidia video card work better considering the chip set?
but all in all thank for the info that you put into the reviews Fink!
Dax
AtaStrumf - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
I just hope that your upcoming OC article will at least mention sempron 3100+, since you (AT)did promise to OC it, but untill now you have not done so.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#28 Wesley Fink-From the aricle- "If overclocking is not particularly important to you, then one of the first generation boards based on the VIA chipset might also meet your needs at a lower price."
And your reply- "There is actually another complaint about Sis. None of the Sis A64 cipsets I have tested, including the 939 Reference Board, have a working PCI/AGP lock."
If overclocking is not particularly important to someone, the lack of a PCI/AGP lock wouldn't matter.
jwix - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
The article mentions overclocking difficulties with SATA drives with the DFI board being the exception. I wonder....if running 2 drives in a raid 1 config, would it make it any more difficult to overclock on the DFI?LocutusX - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
"The problem is ports 1 and 2 on nVidia are coupled with the PHY Gigabit LAN and generally will not overclock very well."Source?