Latest Board Products (Asus - M3N-HT Deluxe Mempipe review)

One of the latest boards form Asus is the M3N-HT Deluxe, based around Nvidia's new nForce 780a SLI chipset which offers 3-Way SLI support for AMD processors, as well as bringing Nvidia's new HybridSLI technology to the table.

Nvidia's HybridSLI consists of two technologies - HybridPower and GeForce Boost - both of which are only available under Windows Vista. The power-saving HybridPower works by turning off the dedicated graphics card when you're not playing games and dynamically switching in the onboard GeForce 8 series graphics. GeForce Boost, meanwhile, allows the graphics core of a dedicated card and the core of the integrated graphics to be used in SLI mode.

So far, so good, but at present both technologies are limited to a couple of cards each. GeForce boost only works with GeForce 8400GS and 8500GT entry-level cards, while HybridPower is restricted to the high-end GeForce 9800GTX and 9800 GX2.

Asus's M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe supports both AM2 and AM2+ AMD processors. To get the best out of the board you really need to use a Phenom processor, as this allows you to get the full benefit of the HyperTransport 3.0 interface which is theoretically 10,400MBps (but current Phenoms work at the lower end of the HT 3.0 specifications, at 7,200MBps).

Four DIMM slots support 1066/800/667/533MHz DDR2 memory up to a total memory capacity of 8GB, although 1066MHz support is only supported by AM2+ CPUs.

Passive heatsinks are used throughout; both bridges and the MOSFETS, although Asus bundles a small fan in the box should your overclocking efforts start to cook the Northbridge. Also a pair of passive coolers are provided for two memory modules and these will even fit standard sized modules with their own heatsinks, although you might run into problems with the massive heatsink-equipped modules like Corsair's DHX series.

Three x16 PCI-E 2.0 slots are provided which allow 3-way SLI setups to be used, but they only work at full x16 speed in the standard dual card SLI setup. When three cards are used, one slot runs at full speed while the other two run at x8 speed.

For expansion purposes there are two PCI slots along with a single x1 PCI-E slot, which is about all you need as the board comes with integrated Gigabit Ethernet and eight-channel audio (ADI AS1988B chip) which also feeds the S/PDIF out port on the rear I/O panel. In any case, there just isn't enough room on the board for any more slots.

Six SATA 3GBps ports are edge-mounted at ninety degrees, making for tidy cable runs, and there is support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) RAID arrays. A Marvell 6111 controller looks after the e-SATA port on the rear panel.

A really useful feature is what Asus calls Express Gate, a Linux utility with a five-second boot-up time allowing you to surf the 'net, use Skype and access webmail without booting into Windows.