Asus P5NSLI

Memory Performance:

Unbuffered memory performance is nothing of pathetic at the moment. Not being able to find stability at the chipset's maximum of DDR2-667 when we're using SLI-Ready DDR2-800 memory that performs in excess of this, is a let down. However, we understand that there are some issues outstanding in the BIOS, as we were able to get 2x512MB of memory working at DDR2-667.

Disk Performance:

The SATA read tests were conducted with a 74GB Western Digital Raptor using HD Tach 3.0.1.0's 8MB zone test. The USB 2.0 tests were done using an ATA133 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drive (model number: 6L160PO) using the same 8MB zone test enclosed in an Icy Box USB 2.0 hard drive caddy. We recorded the average read speeds in all cases.

Unfortunately, the USB 2.0 scores aren't that great either. We ran out performance tests on all four USB 2.0 ports on the rear I/O panel, just in case the first port we tried was bad. Disappointingly, that wasn't the case, as all four USB 2.0 ports yielded the same results. Not only is it almost a third slower than the others but it does so with higher CPU usage too.