ABIT AN8 SLI

PATA doesn't have funky things like NCQ and the ability to hot-swap devices in and out. NCQ can give some decent performance benefits when 'multitasking'.

 

why?
i've got 6 or 8 sata ports on my nf4 board (i cant actually remember but its more than i have space for hard drives )

 

Depends if they go to LANs a lot and fill harddisks at a time whilst burning multiple DVDRs with leeched content.

P// ATA cables suck and even though the connectors NEVER come out when you dont want them to unsupprisingly they also suffer from connector breakage when you try to lever the cable out.

Ham - Native support = better.

 

raid 5 on the nvraid and raid 0 on the sil
or
sata raid 5 on the nvraid and ide raid 0 on the nvraid

bent pata pins really suck

 

Been wating a while for you guys to review this board, looks very nice, are there any other boards out there that offer a performance boost over the abit, that still have the silent northbridge? (can't stand 40mm fans)

 

Performance boost? NForce 4 is about as fast as you can get, chipset wise, unless you want to buy a faster processor.

 

Sure, I realise that Bindi, I just don't want to spend £100 on a board if there is something out there a whole lot better for £110, get what I mean ?

 

Well, I doubt between mobo manuf.'s that you'd see a whole lot of difference when using the same chipset. I cant speak for all boards, because I've not used all boards. Personally I'd go for a) a fast chipset then b) choose which board I want on feature and stability quality.
The Fataility edn of the AN8 is meant to be the "ultimate" for ABIT, but that's just a bit different and gives more features. The core speed and design is still the same across the board.
As for a noticable difference, I wouldnt say ive had any. You sort of reach a top end plateu (sp?) where "inferior" boards wont do stuff like 1T or overclock a bit, but the ones that all do the fastest timings and overclock a bit more (again, as subjective as it is) all work around the same.
edit: baring in mind NV has just released the Nforce 4 with dual x16 slots like the Asus A8N32.

 

OK, I worded that a little wrong, wanted to know if there were any comparable (price wise) nf4 boards that were significantly better, but still retained the quiet northbridge, it would seem not. Don't want the Fatality edition because of the fans, so it looks like this is my best bet

A Reply Such as 'Manufacturer' + 'Model' would have been perfectly adequate

Christ, it's never-ending lol

 

Abit AN8-SLI

I havent used anything else with a passive chipset.

 

I really like the look of the AN8-SLI - if I hadn't just built an SFF, I'd seriously consider that board.

 

I use the AW8 which also uses heatpipes and it's just fantastic. Abit boards eff tee double-u.

 

I acutally just bought this board for my new comp and I'm having what I assume to be a driver issue but I can't seem to get it resovled. Nothing major, I just can't get the S/PDIF jack to output anything more than stereo sound. I bought the Logitech Z-5500 speaker set with the optical in and wanted to have the cool lack of interferance via the optical cable. Well I do get sound but only stereo. If anyone could help me out, point me in the right direction for what to do I'd be grateful.

 

Um, Im assuming you've set it to 5.1 in control panel and in the audio software? It's only AC97 so it wont upmix into 5.1 like Azalia HD audio with dolby. If it's a stereo source, itll play it in stereo.

 

you can set it to clone in the nvidia control panel thing though
second tab -> surround settings -> clone
also to check if it really is working in suround mode do the speaker wizard

 

F T W
lmao

 

Ok, so should I use the Nvidia driver for the audio or the realtek driver? Nvidia's speaker wizard didn't do anything so I installed the realtek drivers and those at least get the S/Pdif jack working. I appreciate everyone's help on this, but maybe I'll just go buy an audigy2 card or something. X-Fi is too expensive.

 

Realtek, imo. The NV drivers just contain Realtek stuff.

 

Uh.... PATA also has a more limited IO, 123 megs/s SHAREd with everything else on the PCI bus. Depends on the board though, but basicly any modern board will have a much better SATA IO than the onboard PATA could ever dream of..