Which MOBO? ASUS A8V or A8N-E?

Sooty · Post by **Sooty** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:52 am

Wondering which of these to purchase:

ASUS A8V (VIA K8T800Pro) or ASUS A8N-E (NVIDIA® nForce™ 4 Ultra)

I guess the biggest consideration is the chipset. Is one chip better than the other? The A8N-E has an active heatsink, the A8V passive. I’ve found plenty of options on SPCR for cooling the A8N-E’s chip quietly. I noticed the hardware firewall on the A8N-E. Any advice on other considerations between these two boards/chips would be much appreciated.

Planned system:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
CPU Heatsink: Akasa EVO120 (run passive)
RAM: Crucial 1GB (3200 - Matched 2 x 512)
HD1: Seagate 7200.7 PATA 80GB/8MB
HD2: Seagate 7200.8 PATA 250GB/8MB
Graphics: Matrox G550
DVD/CD: NEC ND-3520A
Case: Antec P180
PSU: Enermax NoiseTaker 375
OS: XP-Pro or Windows 2000 Pro

An office computer, to be networked to one or two other computers, for general office work, inc. database and internet, plus video editing in spare time. No intention to play games, or overclock. I want to build an ultra stable/reliable/quiet/secure computer. The Matrox G550 graphics is now available as PCI, PCI-E and AGP – so should fit both boards.

Sooty · Post by **Sooty** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 1:40 am

Anyone?

I did put this on the motherbords.org forum, only one guy responded: “The Nforce chipset is vastly superior to the via chipset....”. Would appreciate a second opinion though.

amplemind · Post by **amplemind** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 5:05 am

If you have money for both an 3800+ X2 and a P180, buy the Asus A8N-SLI Premium with the heatpipe, so it's absolutely silent. Only ~60$ more.

For future reference, VIA is a joke.

GL.

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 6:18 am

nVidia's hardware firewall never worked properly for me (nForce3 Ultra), it would often prevent web pages from loading. After disabling it everything was fine (and yes, the Windows Firewall was disabled).

I don't think that the VIA K8T800 Pro chipset is all that bad, and up until the nForce3 250 it was faster than anything nVidia had to offer. The only thing holding it back is the ageing southbridge, which doesn't support things like IDE emulation for SATA drives (so you'll need to install VIA SATA drivers via F6 when installing Windows XP). (or whatever its fancy name may be - on nVidia chipsets SATA drives will appear as an IDE drive under Windows using standard Microsoft drivers)

If PCI performance/compatability is important to you then the VIA chipset may be better than the nForce4 which appears to have "issues". If you really don't want to go with VIA (and USB compatability is the only reason I avoided them) then consider an nForce3 Ultra board.

Sooty · Post by **Sooty** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:29 am

amplemind wrote:If you have money for both an 3800+ X2 and a P180, buy the Asus A8N-SLI Premium with the heatpipe, so it's absolutely silent. Only ~60$ more.

In the UK there’s a far greater price differential between the A8N-E and Premium.

US (NewEgg): A8N-E $120, A8N-SLI Premium $173 (44% more)

UK (OverClockers UK): A8N-E £76, A8N-SLI Premium £141 (86% more)

That’s $118 more!

Better to mod the A8N-E.

Interesting CX23882-19, thanks.

slashdotcomma · Post by **slashdotcomma** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:42 am

Sooty, I've got the A8N-SLI deluxe (and know two other people who have it as well) and the hardware firewall has done nothing besides give me (and them) headaches. (It also makes it a pain in the butt to dual boot).

Sooty · Post by **Sooty** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 12:55 pm

slashdotcomma wrote:Sooty, I've got the A8N-SLI deluxe (and know two other people who have it as well) and the hardware firewall has done nothing besides give me (and them) headaches. (It also makes it a pain in the butt to dual boot).

Thanks. Just been reading customer reviews on NewEgg for 939 boards, and there’s a few mentions of that firewall problem. Also many mentions of chip fan failure on the A8N-SLI Deluxe, especially the latest revised version.....so more than one reason to mod it! Looks like early versions were passive:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/reviews ... eluxe.html? (....the same sink fitted to the A8V?)

All the A8N’s and the A8V Deluxe (different VIA chip, right?) are equally highly rated. The standard A8V and Abit AN8 Ultra, aren’t quite so highly rated.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 5:22 am

The A8V Deluxe has AGP, not PCI-e. Are you aware of this? It's a very good board if you want AGP.

I see there is an A8V-E with the Via chipset. Personally, if it performs well I would prefer the Via because it uses less power. "Via is bad!" doesn't tell you anything. I wish people would say why/how it is bad when they say that.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 5:27 am

and USB compatability is the only reason I avoided them

What is this USB compatability problem?