jmke

Much of my time over the past month has been spent testing the new AM2 Athlon64 and Sempron processors from AMD. During this time I have not only tested these new processors, but also the supporting motherboards and chipsets. Initial testing was done on an nForce 570 Ultra motherboard using DDR2-800 memory and the results were somewhat disappointing. Although the processor performance did seem quite good, the gaming results were far from impressive as all the tests favored the older 939-pin platform.

It was not until I tested the much more expensive nForce 590 SLI chipset that I began to see the AM2 platform shine. The nForce 590 SLI delivered everything the nForce 570 Ultra was lacking and that was mostly performance! The nForce 570 Ultra feature set was most impressive and thankfully the nForce 590 SLI only gets better. Through testing I also discovered that the nForce 590 SLI seems to be a much better overclocker than the nForce 570 Ultra which is surprising.

Today we will be reviewing the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe mainboard that features the nForce 590 SLI chipset, which is designed for the "enthusiast" segment. As you would expect from the world's most recognized motherboard manufacturer, the M2N32-SLI Deluxe is already making a name for itself as the best AM2 motherboard available thus far, and yes, it features many of the successful design elements of the widely regarded ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

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