Abit AN8-SLI Paper Launched!!!

[enduro]

Look at the AA8 or whatever. It had a special slot built into the board for the sound, so it wasn't onboard, and didn't take up a pci e slot. other than that, what else do you have in a pci slot? I only have a sound card and a LAN port, although all motherboards have onboard now. I'm sure all of that stuff will be more prominent once the majority of the boards out are pci e. probably towards Jan.

 

[Alacritan]

Alacritan, just in case you didn't notice, we're not talking about an outdated () S754-boards, we're talking about high-end (PEG) S939-boards.

And I don't see DFI's advantage over other manufacturers- I mean, board performance is not that different (maybe some hidden options) since the memcontroller is on-die.
Layout counts, BIOS counts, stability counts.
And I do not think Abit will do their mistakes again- I hope it...

I was referring to motherboards in general. Socket A, 754 or 939. Regardless of the chipset, recent boards have all been lackluster, with no real standout other than DFI boards, although ASUS consistently provides better than average boards but not to the level of the A7N8X. DFI seems to have a better idea of what gamers want. Not lots of integrated features, but a solid overclocking board.

 

[K4mui]

If these PCI-e boards only have 1 slot for normal PCI, where are the TV Tuner cards and Sound cards and Modems in PCI-e :\

I see at least three classical PCI-slots.
And this is enough, you need one for sound (in my case for the Audigy2) and one for a TV- tunercard, modems are really outdated

Alacritan, I see your point. And I don't think you're right. There are very good boards, and only overclockers like we need boards like DFI. Abit had some problems, agreed, but I still like my NF7. I heard very good things about KV8Pro, and I expect their new boards to run fine as well. OC doesn't give you a very big boost on A64 (I mean OCing the HTT-link, and this is what DFI is known for)

 

[MiNdWaRp]

I see at least three classical PCI-slots.
And this is enough, you need one for sound (in my case for the Audigy2) and one for a TV- tunercard, modems are really outdated

- 2 x PCI Express X16, 2 x PCI Express X1, 1 x PCI slots, 1 x Audio slot

Says there's only one, unless the audio slot is PCI as well? And I do need a modem because I might be on dialup when I go home for the summer... right now I use it as a cheap Voice Mail system on my phone line.

 

[K4mui]

Says there's only one, unless the audio slot is PCI as well? And I do need a modem because I might be on dialup when I go home for the summer... right now I use it as a cheap Voice Mail system on my phone line.

I'm so sorry- I totally forgot that we're looking into a SLI- system
So you are certainly right. But Abit seems to be the only one with one PCI-slot, DFI has two, Asus has three, and even Biostar has two
Strange way Abit goes...

 

[OC-Master]

I'm so sorry- I totally forgot that we're looking into a SLI- system
So you are certainly right. But Abit seems to be the only one with one PCI-slot, DFI has two, Asus has three, and even Biostar has two
Strange way Abit goes...

Abit is thinking about people like me. I will be using that one PCI slot but thats about it. Eventually, I will retire my Sound Blaster live! and get a X1 PCI Express sound card.

I will also be getting a TV Tuner card which would fit nicely in that legacy PCI slot.

As for your modem, I've seen 56K V.92 USB modems for as low as $50 which would solve your internet problems.


OC-Master

 

[{PMS}fishy]

I'm so sorry- I totally forgot that we're looking into a SLI- system
So you are certainly right. But Abit seems to be the only one with one PCI-slot, DFI has two, Asus has three, and even Biostar has two
Strange way Abit goes...

Not to stick up for Abit, but after have 2 SFF Shuttles, you get use to 1 PCI slot. Heck, both rigs have empty PCI slots. The only thing I would use it for is a TV Tunner. So its not as big of a deal as it seems.

 

[MiNdWaRp]

yeah I didn't look at asus's specs closely enough I guess...
I could probably live with one PCI slot for my modem, and wait for sound card/tv tuner that'll use PCI-e.. however I am watching Asus's solution closest at the moment so it doesn't really matter

EDIT: Also where can I find specs on some of the boards other than Abit/Asus? And why am I still waiting for them to show up on NewEgg

 

[K4mui]

Abit is thinking about people like me. I will be using that one PCI slot but thats about it. Eventually, I will retire my Sound Blaster live! and get a X1 PCI Express sound card.

I will also be getting a TV Tuner card which would fit nicely in that legacy PCI slot.

As for your modem, I've seen 56K V.92 USB modems for as low as $50 which would solve your internet problems.

I don't need a PCI slot for internet, I've got DSL, meaning I have a download of 1MBit/s (I never said I understand people using modems)

But I need it for my Audigy2 (and no soundcard will ever be able to need more than 15MB/s) and my TV-tuner (they don't need PCIe as well)
That's two of them.

btw, do you work for Abit

 

[MiNdWaRp]

Yeah I don't think sound cards will need PCIe but I'm guessing they'll be able to use that extra bandwidth in TV Tuner cards.

 

[9mmCensor]

Yeah I don't think sound cards will need PCIe but I'm guessing they'll be able to use that extra bandwidth in TV Tuner cards.

probably not.

 

[K4mui]

Yeah I don't think sound cards will need PCIe but I'm guessing they'll be able to use that extra bandwidth in TV Tuner cards.

Even HDTV doesn't need the bandwith of PCI. The bigger problem would be the HDD- speed (in case of recording), they wouldn't be able to catch up. In the best case you can transfer ~100MB/s by the PCI-bus, but what RAID0 can do this?

 

[SK8]

Well you guys wanna know what ive gatherd about abit and dfi. It seems that the key bios writer , i forget his name atm, used to work for abit when they were good and everyone loved em, he changed over to dfi and now dfi is one of the best mobo companys. If anyone remembers the guys name then cool

 

[man_utd]

So I guess I need to remove my new and now "obsolete" 15k scsi drive because I have the "excellent not quite soundstorm" onboard audio.

Saying that pci is obsolete is a fact, but justifying nearly phasing it completely out for no obvious reason is ludicrous.

 

[DanIdentity]

Well you guys wanna know what ive gatherd about abit and dfi. It seems that the key bios writer , i forget his name atm, used to work for abit when they were good and everyone loved em, he changed over to dfi and now dfi is one of the best mobo companys. If anyone remembers the guys name then cool

Oscar Wu.

 

[K4mui]

So I guess I need to remove my new and now "obsolete" 15k scsi drive because I have the "excellent not quite soundstorm" onboard audio.

Maybe I got something wrong in this post, but I don't see the sense in that? Anyway, SK8, I don't think you can judge a whole company by only one BIOS-engeneer- there must be more than that

But you are unfortunatelly right, Abit makes very much mistakes, just look at the posistion of the 5V-psu-connector, DFI made it right, but Abit...
I don't know how all the manufacturers could do this major mistake? They can hardly be so stupid? I am really leaning towards Asus' A8N-E, because it has superior layout over Abit's boards, well, let's see how fatal1ty will look like- but I'll chose my next board not by the name anyway- those times are gone (when you could buy an Abit without major concerns)

 

[OC-Master]

yeah I didn't look at asus's specs closely enough I guess...
I could probably live with one PCI slot for my modem, and wait for sound card/tv tuner that'll use PCI-e.. however I am watching Asus's solution closest at the moment so it doesn't really matter

EDIT: Also where can I find specs on some of the boards other than Abit/Asus? And why am I still waiting for them to show up on NewEgg

I'm not sure if you'd ever use Firewire or not but this board has Firewire2 technology (IE1394b) which is 800Mbits/s (100MB/s) which is as fast a an ATA100 hard drive connection


OC-Master