SLI is like a family, stone me

SLI IS WORKING just fine. Its stable, it's easy to use and has just upgraded to two by sixteen PCIe slots. Nvidia's new chipset now has two PCIe 16 X graphic slots but it doesn't look that it can improve the graphic performance. It's still nice to know that you have two by 16 graphic slots.

We thought it was time to upgrade our testing platform from an old Nforce 4 SLI to new Nforce 4 SLI X16 motherboard. Our choice was obvious as there are no many boards available with this chipset. We picked Asus A8N32 motherboard Deluxe edition for several reasons. First of all t was first in our hands, second it doesn't have that annoying dual PCIe to single PCIe SLI switch board and last and not least it has passively cooled Northbridge and Southbridge.

Two Gainward cards inside of Asus A8N-32 Deluxe board

What we liked about Asus motherboard is that is has quite a lot of space between two PCIe slots, you can plug any of two Geforce 7800 GTX cards inside including 512 and including two water cooled. Asus introduced soft bendable SLI bridge connector and you have two PCI slots between PCIe graphic slots. We tried to plug a PCI card inside and we succeeded. It will be very close to the single slot Gainward 7800 GTX 256 MB 3500PCX Golden Sample card but at the same time we have to say that you can forget about at least one PCIe slot when you are using stock cooled Geforce 7800 GTX 512 MB card.

The board has socket 939 of course, four DDR memory slots that works well with Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory that we tested, socket is surrounded with eight power phase transistors that runs cooler and should last longer. The board was stabile at all time.

Asus A8N-32 Deluxe board- back panel

The board supports two PCIe 16X cards at PCIe 16X speeds, one PCIe 4X slot and three PCI slots. The board supports legacy IDE controllers or SATA 2.0 drives. The board has extra Molex power connector that can feed it with more power that you might need for two cards in SLI.

Back panel features two PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors, SPDIF and optical audio connector, legacy Parallel printer port, 5.1 analog outs, four USBs and two Marvell 1 Gbit LAN cards. There is also very convenient eSATA port that will let you connect your hard drives without opening the box, we wonder what you do with the power for that drive. You can also find an additional SATA connector at rather strange place just close to the back panel but we believe that this one has to do something with eSATA port. Both are driven with SiL 3123 controller while the other four SATA ports are controlled by Nvidia's Southbridge.

The board has recognizable AMI bios and gives you all the overclocking options. We didn't try those at press time but since we have the memory that can overclock just fine we will come back to this. The board was easy to install the package was very nice featuring a lot of cables and some nice software such as WinDVD suite including Photo Album 1.0, WinDVD Creator 2, DVD Copy 2.5 and Disc Master 2.5.

Asus also includes its overclocking, updating and monitoring software and this might come handy to the overclockers or the chaps that want to have latest greatest bios.

Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample card

Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample card is clocked at 480 MHz core and 1300 MHz memory. The core is 50 MHz overclocked while the memory is 100 MHz overclocked compared with stock card. The cards are using single slot cooling and have very nice Gainward branded cooler, its Nvidia stock cooler but the picture is better.

Package contains multi port cable with a branch for HDTV, S Video and Composite In and out's, two DVI to AGP dongles, six pin PCIe power cable, Gainward Power CD with expert tool and other utilities, quick start guide, Gainward movie auto producer 3 software and Power DVD 5.

Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample Box

Benchmarketing:
Our new test rig is still lacking FX57, we still can not find one so you have to satisfy and look at those cards tested with Athlon X2 4800+. We compared two Gainward 7800 GTX card in SLI versus single Gainward 7800 GTX 256 card and we are ready to share the scores with you. Details about the rig are:
Two Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample Geforce 7800 GTX 256 MB cards clocked at 480 / 1300 MHz.
Asus A8N32 Deluxe Nforce 4 SLI X16 motherboard
Dual core Athlon 64 4800+ clocked at 2400 MHz
2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Stock Athlon 64 cooler
OCZ Power Stream 600W PSU

2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	107.5	102.8	92.4
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	106.0	105.7	104.5
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	95.2	74.9	56.7
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	105.4	101.4	92.8
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	143.3	137.1	126.9
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	143.8	143.2	140.7
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz - without SLI connector	140.9	136.5	124.5
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	130.3	109.9	92.8
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	141.2	135.9	129.5
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz - without SLI connector	136.2	120.5	101.5
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	100	79	58
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	112	110	92
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	60	43	29
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	96	75	51
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	18036	145.6	118.4	105.6
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	29263	256.6	210.1	182.6
CPU Test	CPU Score	CPU Test 1	CPU Test 2
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	1212	137.0	21.2	30.8
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	1216	138.4	21.1	30.8
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	4490.6	11231.8	50.3	385.5
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	8788.5	21869.1	91.7	672.9
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	8516	37.1	25.9	41.2
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	12480	45.5	37.1	73.7
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz - without SLI connector	12025	45.0	36.8	67.3
CPU Test	CPU Score	CPU Test 1	CPU Test 2
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	5920	2.7	5.8	30.8
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	6037	2.8	5.8	30.8
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz - without SLI connector	5738	2.6	5.7	30.8
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	5348.3	11402.2	329.6	67.8/49.6
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	10541.1	221320	629.9	133.6/95.4
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz - without SLI connector	8648.6	15238.3	382.4	129.9/92.1
PC Mark 2004 ASUS A8N32-SLI DELUXE	CPU	Memory	HDD	Total
Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	6664	4846	5259	6831
Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	6665	4855	5241	6771
Sandra 2005 ASUS A8N32-SLI DELUXE	Gainward 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz	Gainward SLI 7800GTX 480x1300 MHz		Total
CPU	21685	21686		30.8
	9846	9871		28.6
Memory	4767	4768		30.8
	4762	4769		28.6
Multimedia	45623	45594		64.8
	45671	49673		64.8

Doom 3 without FSAA and Aniso only show some difference at 1600x1200. At that resolution you will score around 15 frames more than with a single card. Once you turn FSAA and Aniso on you can see huge performance increase with SLI. At 12x10 and 16x12 you will gain more than fifty percent by using two cards.

We tried to play Quake 4 even without Nvidia SLI connector and this is what we found out. Same story again you need to get to 1600x1200 to see any kind of noticeably difference. Once you unplug SLI connector and run two cards you can clearly see that the score will dramatically decrease and will be almost as equal as you were running a single card, so we advise you to keep the connector plugged.

Once you turn FSAA and Aniso in Quake 4 the difference between single and SLI cards is much more noticeable. In 1600x1200 SLI is some 40 frames faster than a single card while two SLI cards without SLI connector are faster than a single card but still almost 30 frames below SLI connected cards. One more time keep this connector plugged.

Fear was showing some huge difference even without FSAA and Aniso on. At 10x7 you get some 12 frames or should we say 12 percent faster. At 12x10 FEAR runs 39 percent faster than on single card while at 16x12 there is a 34 FPS difference or 56 percent difference.

Once you turn the FSAA on even at 10x7 SLI is almost 60 percent faster than a single card while the difference is even bigger at 12x10. At 16x12 you get as much as 75 percent of increase by adding a second card. This definitely makes an SLI worth a while and FEAR is the game that represents the way the games are going to look in the future.

In both 3Dmarks two Gainward cards will simply blow away any single card that is available now. 3Dmark03 score of 29263 without overclocking is definitely respectful one and we need to tell you that a single card will score 18036 or should we say 11000 less than two cards in SLI. All the scores are significantly better on two cards than on a single one.

We manage to break 10000 with a single SLI 7800 GTX 512 MB card but only two cards will get you to 12480 our personal non overclocking record. Very intensive game four nature test will run 56 percent faster on two Gainward cards in SLI. We also tried to run the cards without SLI connector and we notice that the score decreased for some 450 points on in nature test it was 6.4 FPS slower. Pixel Shader test showed that two cards can run 90 percent faster than a single one and this is also the most difference that we every seen by using a two cards in SLI.

When it comes to motherboard testing CPU score is a little bit higher in SLI than without it while PCmark04 showed almost identical scores, a single card was a little bit faster but it was nothing to worry about. Sandra confirmed that the board will run a single card as fast as it will run with two but we gained some very impressive memory scores as we don't believe that we saw 4768 MB /s memory score every day. It seems that Corsair and Asus did a great job together as the memory was flying on this test. We should play with this memory in the future to try to show you how good it really is, stay tuned but from what we've seen it looks good to us.

Two Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/3500PCX Golden Sample cards

Conclusion
If you want top motherboard packed with loads of features that will be great for overclocking and will accommodate any two cards from Nvidia in SLI, Asus A8N32 Deluxe is the right way to go. It will be 80 to 100 percent more expensive than old Nforce 4 SLi motherboards. If you have Nforce 4 SLI motherboard doesn't bother about new Nforce 4 SLI X16 chipset as you wont gain some significant scores but if you want to go for top SLI platform this might be the right way to go. If you are willing to spend €200 for a motherboard we can easily recommend this board. The only problem is that you can buy a great Nforce 4 SLI motherboard for €100 to €120 including tax as we speak.

The Gainward card in Germany cost around €440 but it might come even cheaper as the 256 GTX prices were dropping to make some space for Geforce 7800 GTX 512. With two of those cards you will defeat even the fastest 7800 GTX with 512 of memory. We did a little calculation and learned that two Gainward cards will cost you 2x€444 for the cards and 200 for the A8N32 deluxe motherboard together 1088. GTX 512 times two gets you to €1300 for the cards plus €200 for the motherboard, all together to €1500 or Dollars depends where you are. So you might save some € 400 if you get this one and its available now. Just a thought.

Two of those cards are faster than one as simple as that but then again two 7800 GTX 512 will surely defeat our scores but will cost you more. We like the fact that our tested Gainward cards were very quiet and that they are both single slot. You can even plug them into Shuttle lunch box. As you know Gainward clocks its cards fast and those cards where running at 490 MHz and even 500 if you want to overclock and I can assure that you won't regret getting those cards. Still be sure that Gainward will have its 7800 GTX 512 card very soon. µ