Gigabyte 8N-SLI Quad Royal - Discussed and Tested

Final Thoughts

While not able to take advantage of the Quad SLI function of the 8N-SLI Quad Royal at this present time, nVidia may introduce Quad SLI support to the public in the future and this is the first retail board to support such a setup.

nVidia's own statements show that Dell is currently the only manufacturer to get qualifications for this as a retail offering, but how long till these drivers leak to the market and are modded to work with any Quad SLI setup? This is something even we can't answer, but Gigabyte is ready for that day already with the 8N-SLI Quad Royal. Even still, don't forget if you're using this motherboard for SLI, you're using the latest nForce IE chipset from nVidia: this means, you're using full speed SLI (2 x 16 times slots) and being assured of the maximum performance possible from your graphics cards.

If you aren't the type of user who wants Quad SLI but want more desktop room on the PC, then this motherboard with its eight monitor support is simply the way to go. With four graphics cards supporting two monitors each, it's hard to go past this as the ultimate in 3D rendering and graphical presentation setup, and with the Hyper Threading and Dual core Pentium Extreme running the show, you can do almost everything at once on this board.

Even if you don't want multi-monitor support, you've got plenty of room for expansion in the future for PCI Express devices such as high-speed LAN, RAID controllers and TV tuners which require higher bandwidth PCI Express slots.

To sum things up, if you want Quad SLI now, you will need to wait for a Dell desktop gaming system to hit your doorstep but for the future market Gigabyte is clearly thinking ahead and as always providing you with plenty of choice and flexibility in their product.

- Pros

Fast

Supports up to 8 monitors

Universal PCI Express x16 slots support any add in PCI-E card

Supports Presler core CPU

Supports Dual PCI-E x16 SLI (full speed SLI)

Great overclocking support and options

Very future proof

- Cons

No Quad SLI drivers available yet

Only a single PCI Slot

No HD Audio

Rating - 9 out of 10 and TweakTown's "Must Have" Editors Choice Award