ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI)
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Test Setup
Test Setup
To test the M2N32-SLI Deluxe, we will be using the same benchmark test setup as our last review. However, the current ASUS BIOS seems to have an acute dislike for Kingston memory (various grades and speeds), thus we swapped the RAM with a pair of Corsair XMS DDR2-800, similarly configured of course. All performance enhancement and overclocking options such as LinkBoost, GPU Ex and PEG Link have been disabled for the review to ensure competitive benchmark results. As an nForce 590 SLI motherboard, our main point of comparison would be the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, though we've thrown in the nForce 570 Ultra based MSI K9N Platinum as well for a more well rounded exposure.
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz, Socket AM2)
- 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 @ 12-4-4 CAS 4 CMD 1T (ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe only)
- 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 12-4-4 CAS 4 CMD 1T
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
- MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA ForceWare 91.28 beta driver
- NVIDIA nForce 500 package 9.34 beta
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2 - with DirectX 9.0c
Additional Notes
ASUS has since provided us with an updated BIOS, which resolves the compatibility issues with Kingston HyperX modules as mentioned above. However, it didn't arrive in time to make it into this review. We've done some initial tests though and noticed better memory compatibility with no change in performance. If your motherboard comes loaded with a BIOS version number that is 0406 or smaller, beware of Kingston memory incompatibility. However, newer BIOS versions should have rectified the issue as noted by our testing.
Benchmarks
The following benchmarks will be used to evaluate the ASUS board against previously tested boards:-
- BAPco SYSmark 2004
- Futuremark PCMark05
- SPECviewperf 8.01
- Futuremark 3DMark05
- AquaMark3
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