Features

The A8N-SLI Premium has a reasonable number of onboard and ASUS specific features. Based on the nForce4 SLI chipset, you’re provided with the latest dual core CPU support, dual channel DDR400 and the ability to run two nVidia graphics cards in SLI mode. You also get nVidia’s RAID technology that lets you mix and match Serial ATA and IDE drives as well as ActiveArmor firewall with a Gigabit Ethernet controller.

ASUS adds another Gigabit Network controller along with a Firewire controller to provide you with excellent wired connectivity options however, no wireless connectivity is present out of the box. ASUS also adds a secondary 3114R SATA RAID controller powered by the Silicon Image supporting RAID0,0,0+1,5 and 10 modes. Audio is powered by the Realtek ALC850 codec supporting eight channels with SPDIF connectivity. The A8N-SLI has lots of ASUS specific features as well such as their AI NOS dynamic overclocking, AI Net for testing networking cables, EZ Plug for protection against voltage surges and Instant Music that lets you listen to CDs without booting into an OS. 

BIOS

As we mentioned earlier, ASUS had informed us that the A8N-SLI Premium should be able to overclock much better than their previous SLi board which means more options for tweaking. Starting with memory, ASUS allows you to select the timings and frequency on you modules for getting the best out of ‘em.

Voltage options are also pretty reasonable- especially for memory which can be provided with upto 3.0V while CPU can be taken as high as 1.55V and the chipset upto 1.5V. ASUS provides the option to lower the clock multiplier which works on all Athlon64 CPUs if you’re going lower and with that, you can raise the FSB upto 400MHz which is decent but not as high as other boards such as DFI.

Using the options available to use, we were able to go as high as 260MHz FSB with a 1:1 ratio between the memory and FSB and 320MHz with the memory set to a lower multiplier. While this is certainly much better than the previous ASUS SLI board, we have been able to reach higher FSBs with both 1:1 and lower ratios on a few other boards.

Stability

We didn’t really face any stability issues with the A8N-SLI Premium. While we initially had a problem with one of the graphics cards, we realized that the problem was with the graphics card itself and not with the board. One thing we did face an occasional glitch was when we tried to use a CAS Latency of 2.5 with our module which has an SPD Value of 2.0- although we're sure this will be ratified in a BIOS update.