The Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard Review
May the 'nForce2' be with you

By, Jeff Bouton
January 9, 2003

The BIOS:

The Asus A7N8X Deluxe comes equipped with a Phoenix / AwardBIOS.  While it is hard to get excited about a BIOS, we found this version to be configured nicely.  Along with the standard settings one would expect to find, when we dug deeper into its layers, we found the BIOS to have a good array of settings available.  The Advanced Chipset Features page allowed for access to most of the system's performance oriented settings.  There was a CPU Frequency setting that could be configured for 100, 133, & 166 when the System Performance Settings were set for Optimal or Aggressive.  When we set the performance to User Defined, this unlocked a more versatile CPU Frequency Setting that allowed for precise adjustments ranging from 100-200MHz in 1MHz increments followed by a setting for 204, 207, & 211MHz.  The CPU Multiplier Setting ranged from 6.5-14X.  The Memory Frequency Setting allowed for adjustments By SPD, as well as a percentage of bus speed such a 50, 60, 66, 75, 80, 83, and Synchronous.  With each setting selected, the end result can be seen in the Resulting Frequency field. 

The Memory Timings offered three settings; Optimal, Aggressive, and User Defined.  With User Defined selected, a slew of settings became available for fine tuning memory performance and stability.  There was also a nice selection of voltage settings, which are essential when overclocking, on the menu.  The CPU VCore was adjustable from 1.60V to 1.85V in increments of .025V.  The AGP Frequency could be set to Auto or manually configured to run from 50-100MHz.  The AGP Voltage could be adjusted for 1.5, 1.6, or 1.7V while the DDR Reference Voltage setting allowed for adjustments of 2.6, 2.7, or 2.8V.

The Hardware Monitor provided details about the current conditions of system fan speeds, temperatures and voltages.  There was also an item call Q-Fan Control which allows for the throttling of the CPU fan when temperatures are low.  The Fan Speed Ratio could be configured in a wide variety of ways to accommodate various conditions, and a speed up time could be adjusted to fine tune its responsiveness to temperature changes.

It seems that ASUS went out of their way to provide a BIOS that was quite capable of offering the user a clear path to the system's inner workings.  We were quite pleased with the variety of settings available and the way they were managed in the menu system.  Next we'll roll up our sleeves and get down to business to see what this motherboard can do with the nForce2 chipset in control.
 

Hot Hardware Test System AthlonXP All the Way!!

Overclocking the Asus A7N8X Deluxe Get On The Bus!

When it came to overclocking the A7N8X Deluxe, the board performed rather well.  We first started off by reducing the multiplier of our unlocked Athlon XP 2000+ and setting our memory settings to Optimal (SPD).  We then started increasing the bus speed until the system became unstable.  To our surprise, we were able to boot into Windows with the system bus set for 204MHz and the CPU running slightly under spec.  When we tried to complete any benchmarks, however, both 3DMark and PCMark would simply quit to the desktop.  This wasn't so much of a surprise as was the fact that the system booted at all at this speed.  Most of the time we have very little luck pushing boards very high when they have a lot of integrated components.  The more integrated components, the more potential weaknesses exist for an overclock to fail.  But when it came to overclocking the system stably, we found the sweet spot to be at a bus speed of 185MHz and a multiplier setting of 10, boosting our CPU from 1.67GHz. to 1.86GHz. We did need to increase the CPU voltage to 1.825V which balanced the system nicely.  In the end, we had no difficulty running both 3DMark2001SE and PCMark2002Pro without any issues and the scores, as you will see later, were pretty nice too.

Overclocking and Sandra 2002 Pro