[DarkPurity]

Looks like I'm not the only emigrant from DFI to ASUS.

We're talking about the system in my sig.

My DFI came with a lot of features, but many (like RAID) I don't use. They did, however, send a board with specs not listed on the box.

3x , optimized for dual core processors.
RAM timings adjustment
Anistropic
onboard temperatures
256MB of with compatibility.

So now I'm selling my board for $100 to a buddy of mine, and replacing it with Asus technology. Unlike me, he thought DFI's response of "Well, it won't reboot EVERY time, but when it does you can get 2.9ghz!" was OK.

Which one to get though?

A8N SLI
A8N SLI Deluxe
A8N SLI Premium

??????

I have no firewire devices, several USB devices, and will eventually be RAID'ing SATA drives. Beyond that I have no clue what the differences are between these boards. HELP!

[apesoccer]

None of the above...wait for the asus a8n32-sli board. It shows a good improvement over previous sli boards specifically when running two 7800s, which i see you already have. You should be golden with that one. The ONLY thing i'd worry about, would be if your case mounts mobo's on the oppisite side of the case (btx instead of atx style [even though btx doesn't actually exist...nm]). When using what i'm going to call btx style case, it mounts the mobo upsidedown, which makes the mobo overheat when using that heatpipe solution that the a8n32-sli and the a8n-sli premium use.

[DarkPurity]

I need the mobo within the next week, and Asus has advanced the date on the A8n32...again.

That's why I didn't list it.

So if I had to pick from the above three, for hardcore gaming and a good OC (nothing fancy on my drives), which is best?

[apesoccer]

hands down premium

[DarkPurity]

Why? What features are different between the boards, are OC's affected, etc? Because if there's no massive difference to my OC or anything I'll use the difference to buy an XP-120 and a Delta 120mm.....

[apesoccer]

As you can see in my sig, i've got the premium...well i haven't oc'd with it yet, i just put it together and am planning on ocing tonight.

What you can't see, is the research i've put in to this. And the background heh. I owned the Deluxe for a while as well. People are ocing the deluxe to a max of 245fsb dual channel 1:1 @ 1T timings. The best i've seen 1:1 @ 2T is just today, someone hit 265 on what i'm sure is 2T timings and was single channel (with a 3800 x2). He said it crashes at 270. Well i couldn't push 270 even with 2T and 5:6 or whatever it comes out to. Pretty much you max your abilities to oc at 270.

There are people however hitting 300+ on the premium fsb at 1T. I would like to hit 260fsb if possible with my 3000+. We'll see. The ram will go there no problem, but will the cpu? =)

[ocpinoy]

right now ive hit 310htt on my mobo with my ram set to the 333mhz divider, i also had my ram running 275mhz 1:1

[DarkPurity]

Looks like I'll be going premium then. Benchies are showing the A8N32SLI having little to no improvement over the A8N-SLI anyway due to CPU bottlenecks, and when I get another CPU I'll probably be getting another mobo.

[apesoccer]

right now ive hit 310htt on my mobo with my ram set to the 333mhz divider, i also had my ram running 275mhz 1:1

Cool, i'll push it as far as i can...=)

[matinm]

Originally Posted by DarkPurity

Why? What features are different between the boards, are OC's affected, etc? Because if there's no massive difference to my OC or anything I'll use the difference to buy an XP-120 and a Delta 120mm.....

just the heat pipe