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FlightSim PC Hardware Information - Motherboard
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| Posted by admin on Wednesday, November 28 @ 15:33:25 EST
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Motherboard ASUS P5N32-E SLI
My Opinion
The humble motherboard is one of the most overlooked pieces of equipment in your computer. With all the hype surrounding the latest Graphics cards and CPU’s you would be forgiven for forgeting its importance. Motherboard manufactures don’t help there cause by making the improvements sometimes hard to understand and almost unrecognizable to the average punter. With common acronyms like CH7 and i680 SLI that makes it impossible to the untrained eye to figure out what those things are doing to make your PC better. In this article, I will only cover what I think is most important to my personal setup. This is due to the rapid development in Motherboard technology. I now find that my motherboard is already behind the market leaders after only a few months.
If you have any questions about other boards, I would be happy to answer them in the forums.
The ASUS P5N32-E SLI made early claims to being the best Gaming Motherboard on the market. "The Gamers Dream Platform" is the quote on the main ASUS product page for the P5N32
Taking the Plunge
With a great deal of skepticism, I took the plunge and forked out good money to test the bold claims of NVIDIA. I was not disappointed, The BIOS was easy to setup and configure, almost self-explanatory with the information panel on the right hand side describing what each section is for and what the settings can do for your system. This made it very easy to move around an unfamiliar board for me. The overclocking section was also a breeze with simple overclocking commands asking you if you would like to overclock your PC by 10% 20% 30%. I’m so glad the days of trial and error are slowly behind me because configuring and overclocking could sometimes be a real headache This board however could not be easier even for the novice overclocker and a welcome change from manually having to setup a whole list of parameters. The BIOS was user friendly, simple and intelligently designed to minimise to potential for disaster. ASUS included a little piece of mind with a program called ASUS Crash Free BIOS2. This program took a lot of stress out of flashing the BIOS and updating bios software. I used to be a big problem when the system would hang or the power would go out. In some cases you couldn’t recover the bios at all and you had to buy another one. I was happy knowing my information was safe and that I could tinker to my hearts content without fear of going broke.
The Future
When buying this Motherboard I also considered the future requirements of FSX. When adding the huge list of great software programs that are sure to come out shortly after release. What sort of performance can I expect and what can I do to improve my performance should I need to. With DX10 still on the horizon I was thinking about duel GFX cards but this is something I haven’t played with for years. In fact, I think it was before the year 2000 with 2 old Voodoo 3 cards in SLI. So the fact that this motherboard already had support for duel 8800 Ultra’s was a big plus for me. I’m happy to say that after testing with my friends card in my PC, I was impressed with the performance boost even though it was smaller than I would have liked.
Features Of Interest
NVIDIA’s nForce 680i SLI
Apart from the now common support for 45nm Multi Core CPU’s and FSB speeds as high as 1333. The P5N32 boasts NVIDIA’s nForce 680i SLI, this capability provides stable duel GPU support for the real performance enthusiast. Future proofing any piece of hardware requires forward thinking and I was thinking about adding a second 8800 Ultra to my PC after a few months. NVIDIA SLI™ (Scalable Link Interface) takes advantage of the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express bus architecture and features intelligent hardware and software that allows two GPUs to efficiently work together to deliver earth-shattering, scalable performance. For some applications nearly 2 X Performance.
That last paragraph is right out of the textbooks but for real world applications, it’s not as good as they make it sound at least for now anyway. Performance increases from what I have seen are far more modest, I have seen only a 20-30% increase at best, but for now that satisfied my urge to push FSX to new heights. Something to keep in mind though is that it’s not entirely NVIDIA’s fault, it’s just that it takes 2-4 years to make a game worth playing but in that time Hardware has doubled or even tripled it’s performance specs. So when FSX was being made they were trying to predict the future. Card makers on the other hand are trying to figure out how to push the limits of there products and the software that makes them work.
Oh, one last thing before I tell you a little about what you get for your money. You should consider seriously the need for more power, you will need at least 800 watts to run duel high end GPU’s in SLI. I have chosen to use two Power Supply Units for a total of 1200watts to ensure that I have a good margin for error. The other advantage of this is that if one GPU fails it won’t bring down the other GPU with it and the spread of power is more even across all sectors.
Overclocking Made Easy
* AI NOS™ (Non-delay Overclocking System)
* AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
* ASUS AI Booster Utility
* O.C Profile
* Overclocking Protection:
* ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Over View
When it comes to Motherboards, having the bells and whistles can detract from the over all performance. You wont need to get Deluxe this and ++ Super Dooper that to get the best out of your motherboard. Keep it simple and make sure what you can afford is compatible with all your other components. Remember that the motherboard handles information transfers from all areas in your PC. There relationship to each other directly affects performance. So don’t skimp too much on the quality of your motherboard or you might find yourself buying a new one when you realise your mistake.
By Gavin Gillett
Next Installment: Building The Ultimate PC for FSX - Hard Drives |
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