Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1818



"Not words, old man," said Mr. Dark. "Not words in books or words you say but real thoughts, real actions, quick thought, quick action, win the day."
One of the more poignant quotes from Ray Bradbury's classic novel, "Something Wicked This Way Comes", fully explains the reasoning behind Gigabyte's desire to design, implement, and produce technologically innovative products quickly into a market saturated with cookie cutter designs and ideas.

It is this quick thought process along with quick action that has allowed Gigabyte to introduce several innovative products over the past year that include everything from the GA-8I945P dual graphics capable motherboard to the impressive single slot SLI based GV-3D1-68GT video card. While the true commercial success of these currently niche products are open for debate, the desire of the company to introduce these types of products is not.

Today, we will review the features, performance, and wickedly unique capabilities of the Gigabyte GA-8N SLI Quad Royal motherboard.


Click to Enlarge

This motherboard's primary design feature is quad graphics capability with the ability to drive 10 displays by utilizing two Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT revision 2 cards, which support up to four displays per card, and then including an additional NVIDIA based PCI Express video card. You can also install four PCI Express video cards and one PCI based video card in order to reach the maximum ten display configuration, but this defeats the purpose of utilizing the latest video card technology in a performance oriented board. The above image was supplied by Gigabyte and is meant to show the 10 monitor capability. We were unable to test 10 monitors due to the lack of the revision 2 Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT video card.

Of course, there are a myriad of combinations up to the maximum 10 displays that are available with this board. ATI graphic cards are fully supported, although they were not tested for this article. We fully tested several display configurations without an issue utilizing two 6600GT, two 7800GTX, and one Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT card for the various display combinations that included up to eight displays. In fact, we were able to overclock the system to its maximum fsb limit with two 6600GT and two 7800GTX cards installed on the board.

How is all of this possible? The basic design feature stems from NVIDIA's decision to utilize a HyperTransport system to link the north and south bridge components of the nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. Gigabyte took this basic layout and engineered a solution to allow the removal of the Intel Edition south bridge (MCP) and insertion of the nForce 4 SLI chipset from their AMD product line. The AMD nForce 4 SLI component is a single-chip design that includes the core logic, networking, USB, and storage option functionality. By utilizing the latest core logic revisions of the nForce 4 SLI Intel (C19) and AMD (CK804) chipsets, this allowed Gigabyte to produce a fully featured board with four x8 PCI Express slots with the option to use two of these slots in full x16 mode. In this configuration, the other two x16 slots will behave as x1 capable slots. Each of the slots can be utilized by various PCI Express peripherals other than video cards.

The ability to have two x16 slots for video operation and the availability of the Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT single slot SLI video card begs the question if this board is capable of Quad GPU SLI operation. The revision 2 GV-3D1-68GT video cards have the necessary SLI connectors and the GA-8N board has been designed for this purpose. However, Gigabyte's forward-thinking on this subject matter is tempered or more than likely dosed with a bucket of cold water by NVIDIA's current decision not to support quad GPU operations in their drivers. However, I have to commend Gigabyte's current design and thought process on single slot SLI capability, as the eventual migration to quad based SLI capable systems is inevitable just as multiple core designs are now taking over in the processor arena.

Let's see what else this board is capable of now and if it can win the day.



Basic Features: Gigabyte GA-8N SLI Quad Royal

 Specification  Gigabyte GA-8N SLI Quad Royal
CPU Interface LGA775-based Pentium 4, Pentium XE, Celeron D, and Pentium D processors
Chipset North bridge- NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition (Crush C19)
South bridge- NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Edition (Athlon CK804)
Pentium D Support (Dual-Core) Full Support
Front Side Bus 1066 / 800 / 533 MHz
Front Side Bus Speeds 400-2000 MHz (in 1 MHz increments)
PCI Express x16 Slot Assignments 1-16-16-1, 0-16-8-8, 8-8-16-0, 8-8-8-8
Memory Speeds Auto- 400-1200 MHz (in 1 MHz increments)
System Clock Mode Optimal, Linked, Expert
PCI Express 90 MHz to 99 MHz in 1MHz increments; 100 MHz to 148.4357 MHz in 1.5625 MHz increments
Dynamic Overclocking C.I.A.2, (5) unique settings, dynamic increase from 5 to 19%
Core Voltage Normal, .8375V-1.80V in 0.0125V increments
DRAM Voltage Normal, +.10V to +.55V in 0.05V increments
Other Voltage North Bridge - Normal, +0.05V to +.035V in .05V steps
South Bridge - Normal, +0.05V to +.035V in .05V steps
FSB - Normal, +0.025V to +.175V in .025V steps
LDT (Hyper Transport) Ratios 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 3.5x
Memory Command Rate Auto, 1T, 2T
Memory Slots Four 240-pin DDR2 Slots
Dual-Channel Unbuffered Memory to 4GB
Expansion Slots (4) x16 PCIe Slots
(2) x1 PCIe Slots
(1) PCI Slot
SLI (2) x16 Fully Supported
Onboard SATA (4)-Drive SATA 2 by nForce 4
Onboard IDE (2) ATA 133/100/66 ports, (4) drive support by nForce 4
SATA/IDE RAID (4)-Drive SATA 2 RAID by nForce 4 plus
(4)-Drive IDE RAID, (8) drive support
Can be combined in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, (8 drives total)
Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 (10) USB 2.0 ports supported by NVIDIA nForce 4
(3) 1394 FireWire ports supported by TI TSB43AB23
Onboard LAN Dual Gigabit Ethernet
PCIe Gigabit LAN Support
Marvell 88E1111, Agere ET1310
Onboard Audio AC-97 8-channel audio, Realtek ALC850 codec
(1) Coaxial S/PDIF output port and (1) S/PDIF input
Power Connectors ATX 24-pin, 1 or 2 x 4-pin 12V
Other Features Gigabyte EasyTune 5 software real time detection and adjustment of various hardware settings
BIOS AWARD D6

The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is a member of the Royal product family and, as such, is a fully featured flagship board targeted for the PC gamer, enthusiast, or general office workstation user. The board will ship with an extensive accessory package along with several features such as C.I.A. 2 (CPU Intelligent Accelerator 2), M.I.B. 2 (Memory Intelligent Booster 2), EasyTune 5, and several board enhancements including upgraded components such as capacitors and power transistors.

The BIOS options are extensive on the 8N SLI Quad, with memory voltage to 2.4V, and a full range of chipset, bus, and vCore voltage adjustments. Memory ratios are handled like other nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards in that the number of memory dividers is so numerous that you can simply enter a target memory clock and the BIOS will select the appropriate memory divider to produce a setting as near as possible to the requested value. The board fully supports manual memory timing adjustments or allows for an Optimal setting that will set the memory to the SPD settings. This Optimal setting will adjust the memory timing settings automatically when the system is overclocked. You have the ability to set the system clock mode to Optimal (sync the fsb and memory to their rated standard), Linked (sync the fsb and memory proportionally as you increase the front side bus), or Expert (allows independent adjustment of the fsb and memory).

The new revision of the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Chipset fully supports all dual core Pentium D processors. We confirmed that the board worked properly at stock and over clocked settings with an Intel 820 and 840 processor, and there were no problems with the board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on the 840 EE processor.



Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal: Features

Gigabyte put considerable thought into the layout of the board considering the amount of space consumed by the four physical x16 slots. The board avoids most major clearance issues - a remarkable achievement with four x16 double-spaced PCIe slots - and was easy to install in a mid-size ATX case.

Gigabyte did an excellent job with the color coordination of the various peripheral slots and connectors. The DIMM module slots' color coordination is correct for dual channel setup. The power plug placement favors standard ATX case design and the power cable management is very good. Gigabyte actually places the eight-pin 12V auxiliary power connector below the CPU socket area, which should assist in easier installs for newer case designs that mount the power supply at the bottom of the case. In a standard ATX case design, there is the possibility of cable clutter around the CPU socket area with shorter power cables.

The floppy drive connector is inconveniently located at the bottom of the board and will cause a cabling issue with larger cases or when the bottom PCI Express slot is filled. However, with the general availability of 2x USB floppy drives, one has to wonder about the viability of even including support for the internal floppy drive. The nForce 4 IDE connectors are placed properly, but the connectors could not be used when utilizing the Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT video card in the first x16 PCI Express slot. However, the slots were available with either the 6600GT or 7800GTX cards installed. The nForce 4 SATA II ports are conveniently located below the IDE connectors and feature the new clamp and latch design. Gigabyte will include the new cable designs in their kit, which greatly enhance the security of the SATA connections.

The nForce 4 USB connectors are located below the battery and the adaptor connectors are a tight fit when utilizing the PCI slot and bottom PCI Express slot. Also located in this area is a port 80 debug solution based on two-digit LED display.

The board comes with (4) physical PCI Express x16 slots, (1) 32bit PCI slot, and (2) PCI Express x1 slots. The layout of this design allows for numerous add-in peripheral cards.

In between the first two x16 PCI Express slots is a mechanical SLI switch that accepts paddle cards. These paddle cards determine normal or SLI operation along with a special paddle card that activates the Gigabyte dual GPU 3D1 series of video cards. The settings can also be enabled in the BIOS and. throughout testing on the board, we found it best to leave the BIOS setting to Auto and correctly install the appropriate paddle card for fail-safe operation.

The CMOS reset is a traditional jumper design located between the first and second PCI slot that proved to be inconvenient at times.

Returning to the CPU socket area, we find a four-phase voltage regulator setup along with ample amount of room for alternative cooling solutions. We utilized the excellent Gigabyte G-Power cooling system for our tests. Unlike most motherboard designs, currently the 8N SLI features four extra fan headers and considering the thermal results of running four video cards, they are a welcome addition.

The Northbridge is passively cooled, but Gigabyte does provide their Cool Plus fan that should be used based on our overclock testing. However, upon installing the fan, it can interfere with a larger style heatsink or a video card in the first PCI Express slot. The Southbridge (CK804 chipset) heatsink is a low profile design with a fan and will not interfere with cards in either x16 PCI Express slot.



Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal: Overclocking

FSB Overclocking Results

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Processor: Pentium 4 Prescott LGA 775
840EE Dual Core 3.2GHz
CPU Voltage: 1.4125V (1.4V default)
Cooling: Gigabyte G-Power
Power Supply: OCZ Power Stream 520
Maximum CPU OverClock 245fsb x 16 (3920MHz) +23%
Maximum FSB OC: 272fsb x 14 (3808MHz) +36%

Oddly enough, the ability to increase the front side bus even further than stock when dropping the multiplier to 14 just wasn't there with the shipping BIOS on our test board. We contacted Gigabyte about this issue and they were able to implement changes within a new BIOS that allowed the 840EE to reach 272 fsb with a 14x multiplier.

Memory Stress Testing

Memory stress tests look at the ability of the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal to operate at the officially supported memory frequencies of 533MHz and 667MHz DDR2 at the best performing memory timings that the Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL revision 1.3 will support.

Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal
Stable DDR533 Timings - 2 DIMMs
(2/4 slots populated - 1 Dual-Channel Bank)
Clock Speed: 200MHz (800FSB)
Timing Mode: 533MHz - Default
CAS Latency: 3
RAS to CAS Delay: 2
RAS Precharge: 2
RAS Cycle Time: 4
Voltage: 2.1V
Command Rate: 1

The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was completely stable with 2 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 3-2-2-4 at 2.1V.

Filling all four available memory slots is usually more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DDR2 modules on a motherboard.

Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal
Stable DDR533 Timings - 4 DIMMs
(4/4 slots populated - 2 Dual-Channel Banks)
Clock Speed: 200MHz (800FSB)
Timing Mode: 533MHz - Default
CAS Latency: 3
RAS to CAS Delay: 2
RAS Precharge: 2
RAS Cycle Time: 4
Voltage: 2.1V
Command Rate: 1

The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was completely stable with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 3-2-2-4.

We will now increase the memory frequencies to 667MHZ to see what effect this change has on the memory timings and stability of the board.

Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal
Stable DDR667 Timings - 2 DIMMs
(2/4 slots populated - 1 Dual-Channel Bank)
Clock Speed: 200MHz (800FSB)
Timing Mode: 667MHz - Default
CAS Latency: 3
RAS to CAS Delay: 3
RAS Precharge: 3
RAS Cycle Time: 8
Voltage: 2.1V
Command Rate: 1

The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was completely stable with 2 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 3-3-3-8 at 2.1V and leaving the Command Rate at 1. We will now try 4 modules at this speed.

Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal
Stable DDR667 Timings - 2 DIMMs
(4/4 slots populated - 2 Dual-Channel Bank)
Clock Speed: 200MHz (800FSB)
Timing Mode: 667MHz - Default
CAS Latency: 4
RAS to CAS Delay: 4
RAS Precharge: 4
RAS Cycle Time: 16
Voltage: 2.2V
Command Rate: 1

The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal was completely stable with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 4-4-4-16 at 2.2V with the Command Rate left at 1. This resulted in a slight decrease in benchmark scores during testing, but did not have near the effect of decreasing the scores when changing the command rate to 2. The command rate had to be switched to 2 once we passed the 675MHz level on this board.



Test Setup

The revised nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset now fully supports the dual core Pentium D processors in both stock and overclocked conditions. There were no issues with this board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor during testing. However, dual core really makes a difference in certain multi-tasking scenarios, as was demonstrated in the dual core performance preview. If you are interested in how the various chipsets perform in a real world multitasking setup, please take another look at that review.

The board's memory was operated at 3-2-2-8-1T for the benchmarking suites (matching the Abit NI8 settings), but the variations in the benchmarks against 3-3-3-8-1T (test settings on previous boards) were very minimal, so those numbers will not be published. The difference in performance results between the Patriot Extreme Performance PEP21G5600+XBL used on previous tests and the Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL at the same settings was negligible, so we tested with the certified Corsair memory as requested by Gigabyte. We will standardize on DDR-2 667 settings going forward and any previous test results used in comparisons will be revised. We also found that certain benchmarks scored better without Hyper Threading enabled, but in fairness, we felt it was best to show consistent scores with this feature enabled as it is the main selling point of this processor model.

 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2GHz, 800FSB, Dual-Core, HT enabled, 2x1MB L2) utilized for all tests
Intel Pentium 820 (2.8GHz) for dual core verification
RAM: 2 x 512MB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL revision 1.3 Settings- DDR2-667 as noted or DDR2-533 at (CL3-3-3-8-1T)
Hard Drive(s): 2 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer), 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE (16MB Buffer)
System Platform Drivers: NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition 7.13
Video Cards: 1 x XFX 7800GTX OC (PCI Express) for all tests
2 x MSI 7800GTX (PCI Express) for SLI Verification
2 x Gigabyte 6600 GT (PCI Express) for Multiple Monitor Verification
Video Drivers: NVIDIA nForce 78.01 for all tests, 81.84 for special results tests
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP2
Motherboards: Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal
MSI P4N Diamond
Abit NI8 SLI
Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal



General Performance & Encoding

Business Application Performance

Content Creation Application Performance

General Performance

General Performance

General Performance

General Performance

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Chapter 9

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Chapter 9

The MSI P4N Diamond and Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal perform very similarly with each other in the benchmarks, while the Abit NI8 trails in the business application benchmarks and the Gigabyte GA-8I955x Royal offers performance in the middle to lower end on an overall basis. It is still noteworthy that the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset "consistently" scores near or better than the Intel 955x in office application areas where historically Intel has been on top.

We included scores of the Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT in the 3DMark tests to give an indication of how well this unique single slot SLI capable card performs. We will be including additional benchmarks along with testing the new 81.84 driver set to see how well a mid-range card and entry level dual core system perform against higher end solutions.



Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

3D Workstation Performance

Performance of the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is consistent and except for the catia-01 test, it falls behind the Abit NI8 SLI, but stays slightly ahead of the MSI P4N Diamond. It is obvious that the better memory performance of the Abit board allows it stay comfortably in the lead.

The only surprise in the 3D Workstation tests was the inability of the Gigabyte GA-8I955x Royal based on the Intel 955x chipset to complete the test. We are currently awaiting a new BIOS to retest this suite.



Memory Performance

Memory Bandwidth Comparison

Memory Latency Comparison

Memory Bandwidth Comparison - Read Performance

Memory Bandwidth Comparison - Write Performance

The memory latency test shows a 14%+ advantage for the nForce4's memory controller. This is an outstanding result and shows NVIDIA's ability to engineer and produce a competitive component. The performance advantage continues to show in the bandwidth tests with the Abit engineers obviously able to extract more performance from their BIOS in this area.



Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

The NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI platforms clearly offer a superior gaming platform when compared directly to the Intel 955x platform. The performance of the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal is at or near the top in the benchmarks. Except for the Doom 3 scores that we are still investigating, this board makes for an excellent gaming platform.

We proudly introduce our latest benchmark for Battlefield 2 written by our own Jarred Walton. The demo is from the Operation Clean Sweep map with 16 players and includes views from a plane, helicopter, and several vehicles along with infantry movements.



Overclocking Performance

The overclocking performance graphs have been added to the standard benchmark test suite and should allow for a better comparison on the overclocking capabilities of tested boards. For more details on the specific overclocking abilities of this board, please refer to the Overclocking and Memory Stress Test section in the Basic Features section.

Overclocking

Overclocking

The front side bus overclocking results were impressive for the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad compared to the other nForce 4 SLI platforms and we are confident that the new D9 BIOS will equal or exceed the Gigabyte GA-8I955x. The fsb results of the Abit NI8 are disappointing, but its memory performance actually evens the field in the synthetic benchmarks where it was able to maintain a 1T command rate up to a 770 fsb compared to a 2T command rate for the other nForce 4 boards.



Disk Controller Performance

With the variety of disk drive benchmarks available, we needed a means of comparing the true performance of the wide selection of controllers. The logical choice was Anand's storage benchmark first described in Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs. the World. To refresh your memory, the iPeak test was designed to measure "pure" hard disk performance, and in this case, we kept the hard drive as consistent as possible while varying the hard drive controller. The idea is to measure the performance of a hard drive controller with a consistent hard drive.

We played back Anand's raw files that recorded I/O operations when running a real world benchmark - the entire Winstone 2004 suite. Intel's iPEAK utility was then used to play back the trace file of all IO operations that took place during a single run of Business Winstone 2004 and MCC Winstone 2004. To try to isolate performance difference to the controllers that we were testing, we used the Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA drive in all tests. The drive was formatted before each test run and a composite average of 5 tests on each controller interface was tabulated in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark.

iPeak gives a mean service time in milliseconds; in other words, the average time that each drive took to fulfill each IO operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of IO operations per second so that higher scores translate into better performance. This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned as it is just the number of IO operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.

iPeak Business Winstone Hard Disk I/O

iPeak Multimedia Content Creation Hard Disk I/O

It is interesting that the performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content IO and Business IO, with the on-board NVIDIA nForce4 SATA 2 providing the fastest IO, followed closely by the Intel ICH7R and Silicon Image 3132 SATA 2 controllers.



Firewire and USB Performance

After looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk might be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput.

Our first efforts at testing with an IDE or SATA drive as the "server" yielded very inconsistent results, since Windows XP sets up cache schemes to improve performance. Finally, we decided to try a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removed almost all overhead from the serving end. We also managed to turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "quick disconnect" and our results were then consistent over many test runs.

We used 2GB of fast 3-2-2-4 system memory set up as a 450MB RAM disk and 1550MB of system memory. Our standard file is the SPECviewPerf install file, which is 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, or Firewire 800 drive using a Windows timing program written for AnandTech by our own Jason Clark. The copy times in seconds were then converted into Megabits per second (Mb) to provide a convenient means of comparing throughput. Higher Rates, therefore, mean better performance.

Firewire and USB Performance

Possibly the most striking finding in our Firewire and USB throughput tests is the performance of an external hard drive connected to Firewire 800. If you wonder why Firewire 800 matters, just look at the data. Our benchmarks show Firewire 800 is up to 46% faster than a drive connected to the more common Firewire 400, and about 29% faster than USB 2.0.

Our test is just one of many throughput tests, but in this benchmark, it is clear that the VIA Firewire 400 chip is faster than TI's 1394a chip. The NVIDIA nForce4 USB 2.0 controller is slightly faster than Intel's solution. Unlike the other Royal member boards, the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal does not offer a Firewire 800 option. This is a mistake in our opinion and hopefully, Gigabyte will address this before mass production begins.



Ethernet Performance

The current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements. All of these boards utilize PCI Express controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.

The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the nForce4 Ultra motherboards.

We set up one machine as the server; in this case, an Intel box with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and this seemed a reasonable choice to serve our Gigabit LAN clients.

At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
Ntttcps - m 4,0, -a 4 - l 256000 - n 30000
On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:
Ntttcpr - m 4,0, -a 4 - l 256000 - n 30000
At the conclusion of the test, we captured the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.

Ethernet Throughput

Ethernet Throughput

The Agere ET1310 and NVIDIA on-chip PCI Express LAN solutions exhibit slightly higher throughput, but their CPU utilization is slightly more than the Broadcom solution on the Gigabyte 955x board. The Marvell 88E8053 options on the MSI board offers excellent throughput, but at the price of having almost double the CPU utilization of the other solutions.

All Ethernet tests were performed with standard frames and the NVIDIA Active Armor suite disabled. Gigabit Ethernet supports Jumbo frames as well and will theoretically provide a further reduction in CPU overhead. We have seen test results that show the combination of Active Armor and Jumbo Frames can reduce CPU utilization below 10%, which is very respectable performance for on-chip gigabit LAN.



Audio Performance

We limited audio testing to the Rightmark 3D Sound version 2.0 CPU utilization test and tested with sound enabled to show the performance effects on several games. The Rightmark 3D Sound benchmark measures the overhead or CPU utilization required by a codec or hardware audio chip.

Audio Performance - Empty CPU - 32 Buffers

Audio Performance - 2d Audio - 32 Buffers

Audio Performance - DirectSound 3D HW - 32 Buffers

Audio Performance - DirectSound 3D EAX2 - 32 Buffers

As you can see, none of the onboard audio solutions were quite as low in CPU utilization as the Abit AudioMAX 7.1 solution. The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal uses the "almost standard" Realtek ALC850 found in most high end NVIDIA AMD SLI systems. The current drivers limit the 3D sound buffers to a maximum of 25.

Audio Performance - DirectSound 3D EAX - BattleField 2

Audio Performance - DirectSound 3D EAX - Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

Audio Performance - Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory - Radar Demo

The Battlefield 2 numbers are highly disappointing as the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal implementation of the Realtek ALC850 sound solution creates a 27% loss in frame rates in this highly popular on-line game in which sound is as critical as frame rates. Both Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory have an acceptable loss of 10%. Obviously, if you are a serious gamer, then a dedicated sound card is a requirement.

While the Realtek ALC850 codec offers acceptable CPU usage and sound for most office applications or internet based flash games, it is not competitive in audio quality with the MSI P4N Diamond or Gigabyte GA-8I955x on-board audio solutions.

We are still finalizing our expanded audio testing suite and will introduce this in the near future along with results from the MSI P4N Diamond and Gigabyte 8I955x Royal boards.



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.

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