Asus Nehalem board with SLI and CrossFire

[Anemone]

Yep the slot arrangement is a strong disappointment. Won't keep me totally away from buying one but I'll definitely look over the varying boards before finalizing given the layout. Don't know why they don't stick the final x16 slot out on the end or at least basically plan on having 1-2 cards using dual slot coolers and still leaving 2 pci-e slots free after that.

Color scheme is also "addressable" before retail and should be. Purple? Black and purple and no other color, fine. Blue and black, fine too. But purple and orange? Ick! Of course, getting rid of ALL the orange would be fine in my book. Red is ok, but the orange is not so much.

On the technical side, I'm thinking even if the mounting holes are the same size, we're all going to need new water blocks, for the larger die.

And I sure hope they make the chipset die more removeable on at least the top end boards. It shouldn't be rocket science to make a block have good contact yet still come off easily enough to replace with an enthusiast air or water option.

Lots to address on this board but all of it is addressable. And remember the SLI board isn't likely to get here before Christmas so really for the first round of purchasers, it's not even a viable option.

[IanY]

Goodbye to Tri-SLI I guess. No such possibility with this mobo

[virtualrain]

The CPU HSF mounting holes are larger so new brackets will be required if not larger blocks. The good news is that there won't be any need for anything other than passive chipset cooling on Nehalem boards since the X58 is now just a PCIe/QPI bridge chip and has no role in overclockability whatsoever!

[twwen2]

The good news is that there won't be any need for anything other than passive chipset cooling on Nehalem boards since the X58 is now just a PCIe/QPI bridge chip and has no role in overclockability whatsoever!

Yup! Only need to WC the CPU and GPU, maybe the mosfets...

[Zaskar]

Goodbye to Tri-SLI I guess. No such possibility with this mobo

Im prettysure the fact that it doesnt support SLI takes care of that anyways :P

This is just their first board, the non SLI supporting one.

[demonkevy666]

what's with the huge amounts of PMW on these nehalem boards ? seem like an awfull lot...

[Omastar]

If it's over $100 US, I'm not buying it...

...said the man with the $1000 CPU.

[Omastar]

Goodbye to Tri-SLI I guess. No such possibility with this mobo

Tri-SLI is largely a waste. What resolution could you possibly run to need 3 way SLI? Multiple monitors? Beyond 2 cards, Crossfire typically scales better, anyway.

[Anemone]

2560 still needs the most gpu power you can manage. 1920, however is basically conquered by either the 4870x2 or 280. The part to remember is that GPU power is a budget constraint of game builders, meaning they build games to a certain average or to a certain high limit of GPU power. When you introduce a generation of cards that raises that limit, they simply raise the content to use it. So, basically, you never have enough GPU power, because whatever you have will always get spent.

[RealTelstar]

Worst placement of PCI-E slots I have ever seen.

That board will not be able to use more than 2 cards at any one time.

Perkam

Exactly. My only concern. Gotta wait for the WS model.

[revenant]

looks pretty nice.. but the funky vanity plates on the coolers is getting a bit much..

[IanY]

Tri-SLI is largely a waste. What resolution could you possibly run to need 3 way SLI? Multiple monitors? Beyond 2 cards, Crossfire typically scales better, anyway.

Tri-SLI is absolutely necessary if you intend to run native on a 30 inch monitor. Systems are pathetically slow with single cards, even with a X2 card, if you even try >8xAA.

The only other alternatives are 4-way Crossfire, the leading solution right now, or 4-way Nvidia (and the next generation is quite far away).

I've used every single generation of 3Dfx/Nvidia SLI lol

Ther 4870 X2 cannot stay the dominant card forever.

[majestik]

Bit-Tech has a massive 3104x2589 img of the board in their preview of the board

edit:

oh lawd, what is this giimmick?

such fail

[[XC] riptide]

Cool pic. Time to start sketching out volt mods.

[Kasparz]

That thing is ASUS ScreenDuo, I have one. But probably this one will have new software that allows not only useless gadgets, but overclocking options too.

[Anemone]

Now to look at a board that has a much better color scheme:

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/10000/...obo/index.html

Pretty sad when you compare the two looks-wise the Asus looks like ...t


The slot design on the MSI is better too, imo, but that may vary if some prefer the x4 pci-e slot on the Asus. I don't but some will for raid cards. If Asus copied the color scheme of the MSI and the slot design with just switching the location of the X1 pci-e and the PCI slots to the left of the x16, they'd have a far better design on their hands both looks and performance.

But this is Asus we're talking about so don't hold much hope of that.

[Chruschef]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty excited to get some SLi action with my GTX280 on an intel chipset, because the nvidia chipsets are trash. The only thing they do well is SLi, and they've taken that technology and thrown it on an intel board. This combo could be really bad, but I'm interested to try it out. The nvidia chipsets seem to do pretty well, and if it doesn't work out I'll just slap a Lucid PCI-E card in there and SLi that way.

In essence the NF2000 chip is just to enlarge the e-peen of the high end market, and it won't hurt the RoG boards; and hey SLi on an intel chipset isn't a bad thing, just more money to pay for those who are willing to shell out the money for the RoG boards.

I'm surprised they actually thought up these new heat sinks on the P6T, I mean really? Catching the blow of the wind from the CPU fan air, thats already heated. Thermally it doesn't make sense, aluminum or copper heat transfer space is the name of the game. The thinking behind the connected heatsinks was to increase heat-transfer space. Hopefully they start using real copper heat sinks on the motherboards, especially the RoG boards. These actually might start selling: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/63...?tl=g40c16s500

[Anemone]

While intriguing a great deal of folks don't want the Nvidia chip on their boards mucking things up and making additional heat and additional board layers adding to costs. SLI is a good thing, but it should have been done in software as Intel offered to do for Nvidia. That's how they do it on Quadro, but not for Nehalem.

Don't be surprised with the success of the 4870x2 and the lack of enthusiasm about the addon chip if SLI on X58 gets a pretty lukewarm reception.

[BulldogPO]

Yep. Extra heat and cost for chip that does nothing just does'nt suit for me.