nForce 590 SLI Roundup

Zitat

Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X

Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X — Abit gets a lot right with the AN9 32X, and with a street price hovering around $170, this is the most affordable Fatal1ty board we've seen. The board's BIOS is the class of the crowd, especially if you're a sucker for flexible fan speed control, and our 310MHz HT overclock suggests that they're plenty of headroom for overclocking. Unfortunately, the AN9's expansion slot selection is a little lacking, especially if you plan on running a double-wide SLI config. That's our only real gripe with this board, though.

Asus M2N32 WS Professional — With a $260 street price, the M2N32 is by far the most expensive board of the lot, but it's the only one with real workstation credentials. The addition of PCI-X slots hasn't made the board too stuffy for a little extreme overclocking, either, because it easily outpaced the rest of the field when we turned up the HT clock. However, PCI-X's appeal really is limited to the workstation crowd, making the M2N32 WS Pro a great niche player, but one with little widespread appeal.

DFI LANParty NF590 SLI-M2R/G — We had high expectations for the NF590 based on our previous experience with LANParty designs, but the board feels a little flat. Performance is great, and the digital voltage circuitry is certainly unique, but the board doesn't set any overclocking records or even offer much in the way of unique BIOS functionality. DFI doesn't even include the MAX Hammer FID BIOS setting—which allows overclocking to more peacefully coexist with Cool'n'Quiet clock throttling—that we've seen on other LANParty boards. With a street price hovering around $190, DFI should do better.

ECS KN3 SLI2 — At just $140 online, the KN3 SLI2 is the cheapest nForce 590 SLI offering on the market. The board performs very well at stock speeds, too, but its BIOS is only barely adequate, and our overclocking experience was disappointing to say the least. ECS continues to make progress, and we love the Top Hat Flash, but the KN3 SLI2 doesn't have the overclocking credentials or BIOS flexibility to rise above the others, even at a budget price.

MSI K9N Diamond — The K9N might not have a real Audigy under the hood, but it's a solid enthusiast board that we don't have any qualms about recommending. Performance is as good as any other board, BIOS options are just plentiful enough, and you can even push the HT clock a little. That said, we wish MSI had left more room around the CPU socket for larger coolers, and we hate to see the SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit pimped as an Audigy SE. You can only ask for so much for around $150, I guess.