Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal Atherton
The Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal available in Atherton, to give the board its full name, is powered by the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. This matches Intel's 955X chipset by supporting both single- and dual-core Pentiums - apart, inexplicably, from the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820, which will only run in single-core mode.
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Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal
When we saw that this motherboard was named 'Royal', expectations were high that it would appear in an ermine-trimmed, antistatic bag with gold-plated cooling gear. Fortunately, Gigabyte seems instead to be opting for the Princess Diana version of royalty, inasmuch that the company has built a board that seems to be at home in a high-spec system yet will still connect with just about anything.
The Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal, to give the board its full name, is powered by the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. This matches Intel's 955X chipset by supporting both single- and dual-core Pentiums - apart, inexplicably, from the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820, which will only run in single-core mode. NForce4 SLI betters the 955X by adding more EIDE ports and support for SLI.
Gigabyte has gone to town on the board with ports and slots; there are two high-speed PCI-E slots for graphics cards, two 1x PCI-E slots, two ordinary PCI slots and three 3-pin fan headers. There are also three EIDE and six S-ATA II ports, all of which are RAID-capable.
The back panel and external brackets feature a similarly dizzying number of ports. There are analogue outputs for the on-board 7.1 surround sound, as well as coaxial and optical S/PDIF ports, two Gigabit LAN ports, a serial and parallel port, and two FireWire ports. After all, the Queen has an iPod. In addition, Gigabyte includes ports for the full ten USB 2 connections that the nForce4 SLI chipset supports. Four are situated on the back panel itself, and another six can be connected on external brackets.
There's a slight problem with congestion on the board, thanks to the location of the ATX12V power connector, and Gigabyte's U-Plus DPS. This gizmo is a plug-in daughterboard on which Gigabyte has mounted the VRMs; apparently, they're higher-capacity modules, and thus provide a smoother electrical current to the board. The downside is that the VRMs are cooled by a large heatsink and heatpipe, which curves its way right into the middle of the most cramped area of the board.
Despite being Nvidia's first Intel CPU chipset, the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition is no half-bred piece of silicon, and it's as quick as Intel's high-end offering, the 955X. At stock speeds, there's very little difference between the GA-8N-SLI, the Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 and the Supermicro PDSGE.
One benefit of the big and annoying U-Plus DPS is that you can jam a ferocious amount of juice through the GA-8N-SLI. The excellent BIOS allows you to overvolt the RAM by 0.7V, the PCI-E slots by 0.3V, and even the S-ATA II controller and Northbridge can have an extra 0.3V. Most impressive of all is that the CPU can be ramped up to 1.6V, well above what EPoX's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board can offer.
Despite all this power, though, the GA-8N-SLI doesn't overclock anywhere near as well as the 955X boards we've seen. We could only raise the FSB from 200MHz to 212MHz, boosting the 3GHz Pentium D 830 CPU to 3.18GHz - the poorest overclock of all the Intel boards reviewed in this issue.
CONCLUSION
In terms of performance, at stock speeds the GA-8N-SLI is as good as any other LGA775 motherboard, and SLI means it has amazing gaming potential. Overclocking Intel CPUs is difficult because of their cooling requirements, but the GA-8N-SLI is a truly atrocious overclocker.
That said, none of the nForce4 SLI motherboards we've tested is a good overclocker, and the GA-8N-SLI makes up for this by having an excellent spread of features. However, the Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe has more widely-spaced PCI-E slots, so the GA-8N-SLI comes a close second for building a king-sized high-end Intel SLI system.
The Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal, to give the board its full name, is powered by the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. This matches Intel's 955X chipset by supporting both single- and dual-core Pentiums - apart, inexplicably, from the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820, which will only run in single-core mode. NForce4 SLI betters the 955X by adding more EIDE ports and support for SLI.
Gigabyte has gone to town on the board with ports and slots; there are two high-speed PCI-E slots for graphics cards, two 1x PCI-E slots, two ordinary PCI slots and three 3-pin fan headers. There are also three EIDE and six S-ATA II ports, all of which are RAID-capable.
The back panel and external brackets feature a similarly dizzying number of ports. There are analogue outputs for the on-board 7.1 surround sound, as well as coaxial and optical S/PDIF ports, two Gigabit LAN ports, a serial and parallel port, and two FireWire ports. After all, the Queen has an iPod. In addition, Gigabyte includes ports for the full ten USB 2 connections that the nForce4 SLI chipset supports. Four are situated on the back panel itself, and another six can be connected on external brackets.
There's a slight problem with congestion on the board, thanks to the location of the ATX12V power connector, and Gigabyte's U-Plus DPS. This gizmo is a plug-in daughterboard on which Gigabyte has mounted the VRMs; apparently, they're higher-capacity modules, and thus provide a smoother electrical current to the board. The downside is that the VRMs are cooled by a large heatsink and heatpipe, which curves its way right into the middle of the most cramped area of the board.
Despite being Nvidia's first Intel CPU chipset, the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition is no half-bred piece of silicon, and it's as quick as Intel's high-end offering, the 955X. At stock speeds, there's very little difference between the GA-8N-SLI, the Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 and the Supermicro PDSGE.
One benefit of the big and annoying U-Plus DPS is that you can jam a ferocious amount of juice through the GA-8N-SLI. The excellent BIOS allows you to overvolt the RAM by 0.7V, the PCI-E slots by 0.3V, and even the S-ATA II controller and Northbridge can have an extra 0.3V. Most impressive of all is that the CPU can be ramped up to 1.6V, well above what EPoX's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board can offer.
Despite all this power, though, the GA-8N-SLI doesn't overclock anywhere near as well as the 955X boards we've seen. We could only raise the FSB from 200MHz to 212MHz, boosting the 3GHz Pentium D 830 CPU to 3.18GHz - the poorest overclock of all the Intel boards reviewed in this issue.
CONCLUSION
In terms of performance, at stock speeds the GA-8N-SLI is as good as any other LGA775 motherboard, and SLI means it has amazing gaming potential. Overclocking Intel CPUs is difficult because of their cooling requirements, but the GA-8N-SLI is a truly atrocious overclocker.
That said, none of the nForce4 SLI motherboards we've tested is a good overclocker, and the GA-8N-SLI makes up for this by having an excellent spread of features. However, the Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe has more widely-spaced PCI-E slots, so the GA-8N-SLI comes a close second for building a king-sized high-end Intel SLI system.
Author: Phil Hartup
