ASUS M4N82 Deluxe Motherboard Review - PAGE 1

There was a rumor back in August 2008 that NVIDIA would stop making chipsets. Many events that took place during that time were heading towards this conclusion. First, motherboard manufacturers did not have much interest for a new nForce chipset, as was mentioned in the news article. Also, since the acquisition of ATI in 2006, AMD makes its own chipsets. In the same year, the NVIDIA nForce 6 chipsets were launched, being the firsts chipsets supporting SLI on an AMD platform.

Last year, the PCI-E interface had matured to get to its version 2.0. Obviously, manufacturers designed chipsets which would support the new standard. NVIDIA then developed the nForce 7 chipset which is very similar to the nForce 6, except that for the enthusiast 780a, the addition of an intermediate chip named the nForce 200 between the northbridge and the graphics cards allows for some 3-way SLI action. This extra chip communicates to the northbridge and the whole system by the PCI-E x16 of the nForce 780a chip, however it manages up to three PCI-E x8 on the graphics cards side. It is known that this extra chip adds latency when the GPU has to communicate with another part of the system. Neoseeker's team had taken a look at that new chipset taking place in the ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe.

Later on, the new Intel platform formely known as Nehalem was getting closer and closer. At that time, NVIDIA had chipset solutions for those wanting to run SLI along with both a socket 775 processor or a socket AM2(+) one. But what about Nehalem?  Intel had sued NVIDIA about this matter. The agreement that allowed NVIDIA to make chipsets for Intel processors was no longer valid according to Intel, mainly because the architecture had changed. The memory controller had now moved to the processor -- which is what AMD had done in 2006. One solution that had been formulated was to allow SLI on Intel motherboards at the condition that an nForce 200 chip was used, however as I had just said, this chip might create a performance hit. Manufacturers and consumers were not too enthusiastic to pay for a chip that was not necessary after all, since the X58 chip already supports up to 36 PCI-E lanes. After a while, NVIDIA came to the conclusion that it would allow SLI on Intel chipsets, regardless of the chips used. It would then be the duty of the motherboard manufacturer to allow SLI on its motherboards. All in all, this means NVIDIA will not develop a chipset for the Intel platform.

Now, what about AMD? In January of this year, the Phenom II line is launched. Then, some information about a new chipset from NVIDIA is leaked; the nForce 980a would be the one supporting the new processors. However, many nForce 7-based motherboards received a BIOS update so that they do support the Phenom II series. Take for example the ASUS Crosshair II Formula or the M4N72-E. The 980a was then launched but did not bring any difference yet. At the beginning, it was thought that it would be present on motherboards sporting DDR3 slots, however as of today there is still no such thing.

I recently got a motherboard in the mail sporting that 980a chipset. It is the ASUS M4N82 Deluxe, which will be the center of attention in this article. I then took a look myself at what that 980a chipset is, because sincerely I did not follow all what was discussed and publised about it. I can now confirm myself that it is purely and only a renaming of the 780a chipset. What I did not expect though is that it got renamed only on paper:

In my opinion, it could have stayed the 780a on the box also. Anyway, let's take a look what the ASUS M4N82 Deluxe sporting that chipset has to offer.

Specifications

Specifications are courtesy of ASUS at http://ca.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=181&l3=919&l4=0&model=2895&modelmenu=2

The ASUS M4N82 Deluxe looks to be promising. Follow me through the entire article to discover if the 780a is still an excellent chipset for the Phenom II series. Can it compete with the 790FX/SB750 from AMD? We will see!