ASUS P5N-E SLI

[IXON]

Asus P5N-E SLI for sale fully boxed and in excellent conditon latest bios installed 703 looking for £50 inc P&P

pictures on request not got enuf posts lol.

[Neon]

I have this board, it's good, but it's still middle of the road. Seeing as you can get this board brand new for £70 you need to lower the price. I was looking at getting a 680i board and selling my one of these, but I was put off as you really can't recoup much money from them.

You'll probably stand a better chance on fleabay.

[BiGfella]

Whats the difference between the 650i and 680i?

I heard you need 680i to run SLi?

[no friends]

You can run SLi on either chipset, but the 680i has a few extra "features" or something, or just a higher price tag ;)

[BiGfella]

Hmmm, well if the price is lowered then we might be able to come to a deal.

[sutt359]

Ive got a 650 chipset, i was reading that they cant support sli memory but mine still works. Other than that its a cracking board.

[BiGfella]

I'm also after a CPU if anyone has one going...

[Omnituens]

i too have this board, only issue with SLi is the fack that any big coolers on the second card will block 1 of your 2 PCI slots AND 2 sata ports.

[BiGfella]

Hmmm tricky one as I have 4 SATA HDDs. How bad is it?

[Rookie]

I have the P5N-E as well. It's a decent board, once you get past the horrible early BIOS revisions. And yeah, my dual 8800s do block access to a considerable portion of the chipset, including two SATA ports and the SouthBridge...which, slightly worryingly, has no form of cooling whatsoever, not even a passive 'sink.

[BiGfella]

This will be a major issue then as it will be watercooled :(.

[Neon]

The main difference between the 650i and 680i is the SLI channels. Running two cards on a 650i board will split them to 8x for each card, whereas the 680i will run full 16x on each card.

[BiGfella]

Ahhh I see cheers. You need to get a 680i then :P

[[IOA]Madcat]

you need a 680i to run G80 GPUs in SLI because they both need full speed 16x channels not 2 x 8

[Rookie]

No, you don't. I know this for a fact because I'm running two 8800s in SLi on a 650i chipset. Contrary to popular belief, two 8x PCIe lanes offer more than enough bandwidth for dual G80s - there are no cards presently on the market that can take full advantage of the headroom that two 16x lanes offer.

[[IOA]Madcat]

I know some ppl have it working but when you buy and 8800 it states on the box you must have a 16x PCIe lane to run it.

Strange how it then works on 2 8 speed lanes.

if your spending that much money on gfx cards may aswell get the 680i board though, My EVGA board has been superb

[Neon]

No, you don't. I know this for a fact because I'm running two 8800s in SLi on a 650i chipset. Contrary to popular belief, two 8x PCIe lanes offer more than enough bandwidth for dual G80s - there are no cards presently on the market that can take full advantage of the headroom that two 16x lanes offer. Seconded. This is exactly my setup too! GET OUT OF MY HEAD ;)

[BiGfella]

Seeing as I am buying now I will get the 680i chipset as it is more future proof.

[IXON]

Lol the 680i is no more future proof than the 650i only real diffrence between the 2 boards is that the 680i can run 16x SLI wereas the 650i can only run 8x SLI.

But if you look up on the internet you will find that 8x and 16x SLI there is hardly no difference.

Also PCI-e 2.0 launches in September with the Intel X38 chipset with Nvidia new chipset to follow suite not to long after, both new cards from ATI and Nvidia will be PCI-e 2.0 when they launch after Xmas.

Allso another thing to take note is that "some" of the first 680i and 650i mobo and other chipset mobo's will not support cards that use pci-e 2.0 if it's using the old version on the PCI-e slot 1.0 only 1.1 ect will be able to use them so check your mobo if you plan on keeping then to see wat version ya PCI-e slot is.

In the PC world ya never future proof because there's always something coming that just around the corner.

[BiGfella]

So in essence if you have the choice it would be the 680i with a PCI-e 1.1.

Thanks for the advice, that is what I will go for.