Sli board

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Does anyone know what the cheapest Sli board is? there are loads of Crossfire ones, but the only Sli ones ive seen are the 680's.

thanks
 
There are still some NF590Sli chipset boards still knocking around such as the Asus P5N32-SLI Premium NF590 SLI but they are not as good and also not much cheaper either.
 
sweat69 said:
ASUS P5N-E SLI, NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI, Quad-Core ready, DDR2 800
http://techgage.com/article/asus_p5n-e_sli/1
This looks like a good mobo for the money around £70.
I think that it will be quite a bit more than that ....
I know that 1 UK retailer/etailer is advertising it at that but they also have a track record of artificially low pricing items when they have no stock ...
 
Any idea on when OcUK will start selling this board? After froogling it I wasn't that impressed with the retailers that came up.
 
Almost all the Crossfire boards will run SLi with the hacked 85.91 drivers. I think you might also want to ask yourself if you want a 2x 8x SLi board like the P5N-E SLi as the loss of performance against a 2x 16x board isn't insignificant.
 
As far as I have seen on reviews the 650 is offering virtually the same speeds under SLI as the 680 chipset, even when loaded with the 8800gtx cards.

Now this might change with future games.

But if some one can afford 2x 8800gtx then buy yourself a 680 as well ;)
 
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@Jumping - can you post a link to the 650 vs 680 review as I haven't seen one yet. My reading of it was that 680i is the only new chipset NVidia have released recently as NF570 was simply a reskin of NF4 and NF590 was a reskin of NF4/32 and NF650 seems to be a further reskin of NF570 Deluxe.

The difference between a P5N-SLi and a P5N32-SLi SE with the same pair of 7900GTO graphics cards was about 1900 3DMarks in '06 which is 15-20%. That either makes it a bargain (85% performance for half the price) or a disaster (Only 85% of the performance!!!) depending on your point of view. I eventually bit the bullet and bought a 680i board which I have to say is excellent, but pricey!
 
Sure Anandtech has a test. Follow this link Anandtech tests the 650

There is one line in that review that is worth a quote
It may turn out that this chipset isn't so much of a P965 killer but instead is a 680i killer in most cases.

As I'm on budget the 650 looks to be the right chipset for me. I wonder would Crossfire work on these boards with the new drivers? Not that I think I'm going to be able to run SLi or Crossfire in the near future but it would be nice to have the capability to do it if the wallet says I can afford it :)

Found another review techgage on the Asus P5N-E SLi board
 
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Thanks for the link - very interesting reading. Obviously, as it doesn't support my own prejudices I will find a couple ofthings to criticise; ;)

1. They admit that their test suite doesn't do much for SLi rigs as the two games they use are not SLi optimised.
2. They say that SLi is a waste of time at the moment as the performance increase with 2 x 8800GTX over one is not worth having which is a truly staggering statement.

On the other hand - the performance differential between the 2x x8 and 2x x16 is less than 10% at it's greatest, so if the NF650i boards do come out at £75-ish then they will be new performance bargain chipset.

As always - I'll let someone else beta test it for me first though :rolleyes:
 
Hehhe :)

Well i have to get new parts for a budget of £300, im hoping to sell my old amd 64 bit 3500+ with parts for about £150.

This mobo looks just like the right price budget for me :) if it will be available for around £70. Then all I need is an e6400 and 2gb of ram which should be possible for under £300
 
BUFF said:
I think that it will be quite a bit more than that ....
I know that 1 UK retailer/etailer is advertising it at that but they also have a track record of artificially low pricing items when they have no stock ...
Had email from them this morning and it said the have taken payment and the board should be with me in the next couple of days. They dont seam that dodge hopefully it will turn up
 
It's turning up on a few more UK sites now in the high £70s before delivery in which case I'm pleasantly surprised if that's going to be the ballpark figure for 650i mobos.
 
Is there any more retailers beside the 3 that comes up on froogle that is saying that they will sell them? I can't seem to find any.

Although I have to wait till I get paid before I can buy anything so hopefully by then more stores will stock the board.
 
Just had a look on Newegg & in the US the P5N-E SLI sells for the same as the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 so you would then expect it to be dearer than £70 here, more like £90 as that's where the DS3 is here.

If all the 650i boards are gong to be £70-80 then it's going to be great for those people that don't need cutting edge features but want good overclocking as they'll be cheaper than 965 mobos :D
 
BUFF said:
If all the 650i boards are gong to be £70-80 then it's going to be great for those people that don't need cutting edge features but want good overclocking as they'll be cheaper than 965 mobos :D

What "cutting edge" features of the 965 chipset is the 650i chipset missing?
 
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