Asus P5N-E SLI small review

[couppi]

I got my P5N-e SLI in the mail today. It's based on the 650i chipset and retails for $129.



It comes with Asus's usual bundle of 2 sata and ide cables, SLI bridge, manual and other assorted goods. Naturally, the board layout is horrible.



I fired it up with my Xeon 3050 on a Scythe Infinity and started exploring the BIOS. RAM voltage only goes to 2.5 volts, but the board's other ram settings match those of 680i boards. NB voltage goes up to around 1.75v and vCore goes up to 1.6v. FSB goes up to 750mhz.



One of the plastic tabs on my Infinity broke, so my temps were hovering at 70C. I decided to go for broke and set the FSB to 500mhz. Surprisingly, it posted fine. I'm going to try FCG's method for mounting the Infinity with screws tomorrow and see how stable the board is.

UPDATE

I put together my p5b-deluxe and did a few benches.

Specs:
Xeon 3050 at 3.7ghz
P5B Deluxe or P5N-E SLI
Team Xtreem 2gb 462mhz 4-4-4-12
x1900XTX stock

SuperPi:
1m

P5B Deluxe: 15.890s


P5N-E SLI: 16.140s


32M
P5B Deluxe: 14m 50.828s
P5N-E SLI: 15m 10.812s

3dmark
3dmark 2001 SE
P5B Deluxe: 46732
P5N-E SLI: 47096

3dmark 2003
P5B Deluxe: 21500
P5N-E SLI: 21779

3dmark 2005
P5B Deluxe: 12989
P5N-E SLI: 13024

3dmark 2006
P5B Deluxe: 6741
P5N-E SLI: 6754

Sandra
Dhrystone
P5B Deluxe: 34551 MIPS
P5N-E SLI: 34339 MIPS

Whetstone
P5B Deluxe: 23498 MFLOPS
P5N-E SLI: 23508 MFLOPS

Bandwidth Int
P5B Deluxe: 7757 MB/s
P5N-E SLI: 7994 MB/s

Bandwidth Float
P5B Deluxe: 7742 MB/s
P5N-E SLI: 8083 MB/s

Memory Latency
P5B Deluxe: 74 ns
P5N-E SLI: 70 ns

It looks like 650i is just slightly faster than p965 in 3D, while p965 is slightly faster in pi.