Asus Premium, deluxe ,32 deluxe

-The premium and 32 have silent heatpipe coolers, the standard deluxe has a really poor fan cooler.
-The 32 uses the nforce4 sli x16, the others use the standard nforce4 chipset.
-The deluxe and premium have 8 sata ports, the 32 has 6.
-The 32 has 8 phase power (better), the deluxe and premium have 4 phase.
-The 32 and premium have digital sli, the deluxe uses a selector card.
-In order of age, from newest to oldest: A8n32 sli deluxe, A8n sli premium, A8n sli deluxe.

I think thats it.
Don't buy the deluxe, get the premium or the 32.

I have both the 32 and the deluxe if you need to ask me anything else.
 
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seconded on the premium or the 32.
dont get the deluxe....the chipset fan is prone to failing and makes one hell of a racket, and is a pain to replace (mobo off the tray etc etc)
 
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I would be very tempted by the a8n32-sli but the slots are awkwardly placed. With my 2 7800s in there there would be nowhere to put my soundcard :(
 
thanks Joe and Olly,
What advantage is that power 8 phase thing?
Whats digital versus selector on the card thing?
thankyou very much ;)

oh and when?if you install windows xp with a single SATA drive do you need to make a floppy to insert during win xp insatll(i here they dont come with a floppy) or does it recognise it as ide etc?
 
meatloaf, i think its the same with the Abit board too.........are your 7800's single slot or dual ?
you'll get away with it in single slot.......I'm tempted to buy a 2nd 7900 gtx and put my X-Fi in the middle of them !
 
Olly said:
meatloaf, i think its the same with the Abit board too.........are your 7800's single slot or dual ?
you'll get away with it in single slot.......I'm tempted to buy a 2nd 7900 gtx and put my X-Fi in the middle of them !
Click to expand...

They are single slot 7800GT cards, so the soundcard would physically fit between the 2 cards but its going to get a bit toasty. With dual 7900GTX cards i cant see there being room in the middle of the cards due to the dual slot coolers they have on them.
 
-8 Phase power: Supposedly more stable, higher overclocks, cooler. Its more of a refinement rather than a revolution, but worth having.

-Digital vs analogue sli: Analogue sli means if you want to switch between sli mode you have to move a physical switch, digital lets you tick a box in windows to enable/disable sli.
This is a feature you should have if you intend to use sli, as some things are still incompatable with it or work better with it off, so its nice to be able to turn it off in windows.

I'd go for the premium, unless there are any features you particularly want in the 32.
Layout is better in the premium as mentioned.
 
When nforce 3 first came out nvidia claimed that their cards paired with their chipsets would give something like a 15% performance boost. I'm pretty sure that was not the case however.

So yes you can put an ati card with an nvidia chipset.

However, if you want crossfire (ATti dual graphics cards) you need an ati crossfire chipset and two ati cards, one of them a crossfire master card.
If you want Sli, you need an Nvidia Sli chipset and two nvidia cards.

So if you want to add a second graphics card later to that board, you can't unless you use an nvidia card.

So far i have two sli boards with 1 card each, and i don't intend to add a second identical card to either, although that was one of my reasons for getting sli when i bought it. As long as you can get rid of the old card by selling it, gettign a new card is almost always better than adding a second older one.
 
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Olly said:
well, without starting another fanboy thread...go nvidia. 7900gtx....lovely cards :)
Click to expand...
Not exactly good value for money though. The 7900gt is great value for money, sadly the cooler looks rubbish and loud.
 
Joe42 said:
I'd go for the premium, unless there are any features you particularly want in the 32.
Layout is better in the premium as mentioned.
Click to expand...

For me, the sli x16 is the main difference, although most if not all people say that it has made very little difference when they reviewed it. (When 7800GTX was the fastest card). Do you think it would make a difference with 2 7900GTXs? If it doesnt, i dont think i'll be getting that board.
 
I only bought it because it was newer than the premium, and i like to get things as new as possible so i get the best tech. I had the extra money and i liked some of the new features and tweaks.

I'm not too bothered about sli x16, it makes no difference in any single card config, and only gives tiny percentage improvements at insane resolutions or for people who want quad sli.
I like it because it means electrically x16 pci-e slots always have 16 lanes, rather than the nforce4 sli which would split to 8 lanes per 16 slot. I can imagine a scenario in the future where i might be upgrading a graphics card and find that despite having the right slot, i don't have the bandwidth required because of some dodgy early sli implimentation. So upgradability is the main thing i like about it.
 
The x16 mite be an advantage to me as im running SLI but to be honest im still going to get the premium as i dont like the idea of sandwiching my x-fi between the gfx cards.
 
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