| ASUS P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 mATX Motherboard
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Overclocking:
Although the P5N7A-VM's stock performance would normally be more than enough for most home theater PC or basic home desktop tasks, there are a couple situations where overclocking could be beneficial. The first would be if you planned to use the motherboard in a small gaming machine, in which case the addition of a graphics card and one of the more overclocking friendly CPUs would have its benefits.
The P5N7A-VM offers very basic overclocking functionality, but it was more than enough to allow me to overclock the Q6600 to 3.0 Ghz (9x333) with a stock Intel heatsink. However, CPU temperatures were on the high side with an average core temp of 68C, with one core at 72C. This isn't surprising since I was using the stock heatsink solution. With the GPU overclocked to 500MHz and the shader clock bumped up to 1250MHz, loaded GPU temperatures hovered in the 88C range throughout the 3D testing period. Since the GPU is integrated onto the chipset, this means that better chipset cooling would also benefit the GPU.
Although it is nice to be able to overclock the integrated GPU, I tend to think it isn't a necessity because anyone wanting better graphics performance would probably be better served by installing a discrete graphics card. Any of the more recent low end cards with dedicated memory would show a dramatic improvement in graphics performance over the GeForce 9300. If you are using the GeForce 9300 in a home theater PC, there is no need to overclock the GPU because it is already quite sufficient for decoding even the most demanding CODECs currently in use.
Conclusion:
The ASUS P5N7A-VM is a great choice for home theater applications or for those who want to build a low cost desktop PC and don't plan to run the most recent generation of games. I was pleasantly surprised with the substantial performance gained from Nvidia's GeForce Boost technology. It's a shame that they chose to leave the other half of Hybrid SLI out of the implementation, Hybrid Power would round out the feature set nicely and widen the appeal of this motherboard. The option to switch between a high power GPU and the integrated GPU depending on a users needs is perhaps a little too much to expect at this price. I should point out that Hybrid SLI's shortcomings are really Nvidia's problem rather than ASUS', but they are still reflected in this motherboard and warrant mentioning.
The P5N7A-VM has been out for several months now and prices currently range between $118 and $140 with the most common price being right around $120. Newegg, Zipzoomfly, and Mwave all offer the motherboard at the lower end of the price range.
The ASUS P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 mATX motherboard earns the Bigbruin.com "Highly Recommended" award for use in a home theater PC or a low cost basic desktop PC.
Pros:
» Multiple display options (VGA, DVI, HDMI, Display Port)
» HDCP compliant
» 8 channel L-PCM audio through HDMI port
» Good basic overclocking tools in the BIOS
» Hybrid SLI – GeForce Boost
» Back panel eSATA port
» Low power consumption
» Support for LGA 775 means users have a lot of CPU choices
» Integrated GPU is DirectX 10 compliant
Cons:
» No Hybrid SLI – Hybrid Power
» Very limited number of video cards support GeForce Boost
» Legacy ports (LPT, serial, floppy)
» Express Gate needs further refinement
» Price is slightly higher than other motherboards in this class.
Special thanks to ASUS for providing the ASUS P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 mATX Motherboard to Bigbruin.com for review!
Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to post any comments or questions.
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