Intel Motherboards: Something Wicked This Way Comes...
by Gary Key on October 12, 2005 2:13 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is an excellent and very unique product offering. This board will more than satisfy most Intel enthusiasts and is an excellent companion for the Intel Pentium D processor series. In fact, NVIDIA has solved their dual core compatibility issues, which allowed this board to shine as a general usage workstation with the unique advantage of offering up to 10 display output.
We have to commend the engineering effort behind this board and applaud the results. While it is exciting that Quad SLI is available from a hardware perspective, it is disappointing that driver level support from NVIDIA is currently not available; although, we are sure that NVIDIA is aware of this. This should not detract prospective users of this board as it offers a world of potential for someone wanting multiple display output utilizing the latest in video technology, or simply a home user needing a board that will satisfy multiple uses.
Although the board that we received was a pre-production sample and utilized an engineering BIOS, it performed as well or better than most boards currently in production. In fact, the stability offered by the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was impressive to say the least as it did not crash once during the entire testing phase and recovered beautifully from zealous overclocking testing. With that said, let's move on to our opinions on this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer looking for SLI, or a workstation user/business owner/video creation fanatic looking for numerous display outputs, then this is the board for you. The variety and potential methods of display options are unparalleled in the general market today. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation. If you utilize the new 81.84 drivers, you can now match like GPU cores from different video card suppliers among other benefits.
In the on-board audio area, this board offers the standard AC97 setup utilizing the familiar Realtek ALC850. While this solution is acceptable for office applications and Internet Tetris, it does not match the HD Audio on-board solutions of the other nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition boards. While serious gamers and audiophiles will certainly want an add-in solution, it is not acceptable for a board of this caliber to be utilizing this codec, considering the alternatives available now.
In the storage area, this board offers the standard plethora of options available from the nForce4 SLI Chipset along with class leading performance. However, as with other Gigabyte Royal boards, we certainly wish the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) option was available considering the video centric design of this board.
In the performance area, this board was at or constantly near the top in most categories. The board is very balanced and will happily run the same benchmarks at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe that the performance will only improve as the board enters the production phase.
I think that Mr. Dark would look at the 10 display output of this board and believe his magic created such a wonder when, in reality, it was the belief of a small group of engineers who wanted to win the day that brought this excellent board to market.
The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is an excellent and very unique product offering. This board will more than satisfy most Intel enthusiasts and is an excellent companion for the Intel Pentium D processor series. In fact, NVIDIA has solved their dual core compatibility issues, which allowed this board to shine as a general usage workstation with the unique advantage of offering up to 10 display output.
We have to commend the engineering effort behind this board and applaud the results. While it is exciting that Quad SLI is available from a hardware perspective, it is disappointing that driver level support from NVIDIA is currently not available; although, we are sure that NVIDIA is aware of this. This should not detract prospective users of this board as it offers a world of potential for someone wanting multiple display output utilizing the latest in video technology, or simply a home user needing a board that will satisfy multiple uses.
Although the board that we received was a pre-production sample and utilized an engineering BIOS, it performed as well or better than most boards currently in production. In fact, the stability offered by the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was impressive to say the least as it did not crash once during the entire testing phase and recovered beautifully from zealous overclocking testing. With that said, let's move on to our opinions on this board.
In the video area, if you're an Intel gamer looking for SLI, or a workstation user/business owner/video creation fanatic looking for numerous display outputs, then this is the board for you. The variety and potential methods of display options are unparalleled in the general market today. It fully supports NVIDIA SLI with two approved NVIDIA based video cards in full x16 operation. If you utilize the new 81.84 drivers, you can now match like GPU cores from different video card suppliers among other benefits.
In the on-board audio area, this board offers the standard AC97 setup utilizing the familiar Realtek ALC850. While this solution is acceptable for office applications and Internet Tetris, it does not match the HD Audio on-board solutions of the other nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition boards. While serious gamers and audiophiles will certainly want an add-in solution, it is not acceptable for a board of this caliber to be utilizing this codec, considering the alternatives available now.
In the storage area, this board offers the standard plethora of options available from the nForce4 SLI Chipset along with class leading performance. However, as with other Gigabyte Royal boards, we certainly wish the Firewire 800 (TI-1394b) option was available considering the video centric design of this board.
In the performance area, this board was at or constantly near the top in most categories. The board is very balanced and will happily run the same benchmarks at its full overclock configuration as well as it does at stock settings. We believe that the performance will only improve as the board enters the production phase.
I think that Mr. Dark would look at the 10 display output of this board and believe his magic created such a wonder when, in reality, it was the belief of a small group of engineers who wanted to win the day that brought this excellent board to market.
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slain - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
WTF?? Man who cares about gaming? As if it matters that u have 10 displays for a game?? This has to be designed to be perfectly suited to multichannel VIZ and Sim, a graphics cluster killer before clusters even took off, AKA where SGI and E&S have played for ever. This could be the final nail in the coffin.... my heart bleeds ;) think about it 4 genlocked quadro’s for 8 edge blended quad buffered channels, this is the sort of thing you drive planetariums and VR centres with *NOT* games.Where can I get one ?
hoppa - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
"10 displays should be enough for anyone"~Bill Gates
vailr - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
No mention of an (Athlon CK804) driver for the South bridge: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2561&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2561&am...Only for the North bridge:
"System Platform Drivers: NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition 7.13"
Also: was the automated driver installer used, or was a manual "Device Manager driver" install routine required? Due to the mix of the Intel N. bridge and an AMD S. bridge?
Gary Key - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Actually, only the Intel driver set is required. I will post a more detailed response later today. We used the automated installation program and you will find the Intel MCP is just a subset of the AMD CK804. I have actually used the Intel IDE drivers on my Nforce 4 board as an example.R3MF - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
one 2405FPW and two 1704FPV's.and the answer is..................
Gary Key - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Email me and I will setup a test configuration for you as I will have that same monitor delivered next week.Powered by AMD - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
I couldnt find the link in order to download the BF2 AT demo, so I can benchmark myself.Anyone found it?
Nice review, BTW, Hope Nvidia support this board in future drivers just to see 4 Video Cards Benches.
BTW, I wouldnt buy this board, it isnt available for the best Gaming Processor.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
It's still "beta" from my perspective, and it hasn't been published. My next article with benchmarks will hopefully include the demo and other required files for running the BF2 benchmark, but just FYI, it isn't meant for non-technical types. You'll have to edit a batch file, and it doesn't automatically set BF2 settings (other than resolution) - it just runs with whatever settings BF2 is currently using. Stay tuned....PrinceGaz - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
Good stuff on adding to the range of games used for benchmarking, and a most excellent choice in BF2 as AT reviews have been lacking in benchmarks using FPS games lately. Adding a seventh FPS title when there are none from any other genre (except Aquamark 3 which is dubious at best as a representative sim) was a great idea as FPS games are all anyone plays at AT. If the recently released Serious Sam 2 is as fun as the two episodes of the original Serious Sam, it might be worth adding that too.But seriously, whilst taking the time to add BF2 to the benchmark suite is probably a good idea as it is very popular, you really should consider games other than what you like-- such as racing, flight/space-sims, above-view RPG, RTS, etc. It's no wonder the benchmarks are all so predictable with the main difference between gfx-cards being OpenGL and Direct3D games, when all the games are basically displaying the same kind of scenes.
Gary Key - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I actually ran benchmarks on Nascar SimRacing (Daytona on four monitors is incredible), LOMAC, Falcon 4- Allied Force, GTR, and Call of Duty 2. We firmly believe the standard benchmarks need some additions to represent the overall gaming experience. You will see some of these results (plus a couple of RTS/RPG) shortly in the next "SLI x16" review. As noted in our sound test we will greatly expand the information provided for on-board solutions shortly to also include the new Dolby Master Studio suites shipping with the SigmaTel 922x and Realtek 882m audio options. Once this board is released for production we will do a complete follow-up that will concentrate on multiple-monitor usage.