The latest motherboard to come onboard our motherboard review is ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition. As its name implies, this mainboard is specifically meant for Windows Vista. If you are familiar with the M2N32-SLI Deluxe, this latest ASUS motherboard is basically an enhanced version of the original M2N32-SLI Deluxe board with Vista driven features. Both the mainboards share the same board design, chipset cooling solution, the same ports and connectors placements, and the same BIOS features.

Built with Windows Vista in mind, this board replaces its integrated WiFi module (found in the Deluxe edition) with an integrated 1GB flash drive so as to support the Vista ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost is a new feature by Vista to store frequent access data on a caching system so as to improve the responsiveness of the OS. Instead of storing in the hard drive which has a lower transfer speed, a flash drive with faster read performance is used instead. Tests have shown that this integration of flash drive indeed resulted in substantial improvement on the system performance.

This ASUS motherboard also comes bundled with an external display known as the ScreenDuo. This little display is used to implement the SlideShow feature of the Vista. Featuring a small screen with 320 x 240 pixels resolution, it can be used to display useful information such as weather forecast, stock market updates, news headlines and etc. A point to note here is that the ScreenDuo is connected to the motherboard via a USB cable. This means that using of this screen will actually deprive you of one USB slot. Unless you have much use for those small widget application (such as weather forecast etc), there will not be much use for this small gadget.

Since Vista requires a huge amount of memory, it is no surprise that the M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition board can support up to a maximum of 800MHz 4GB RAM (for 64 bits, it can support up to 8GB). It comes with 4 memory slot, allowing you to mix and match the various memory configurations. A side note from here: from the various motherboard reviews I have read, I discovered that Vista does not load when the motherboard is fixed with 4 GB memory. It may seem that the memory allocation is too much for Vista to take. When it is replaced with 3GB memory combination, the Vista runs like a Ferrari.

Performance wise, the ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition has the same benchmark as its Deluxe counterpart for many tests. This, again, comes to no surprise as they are basically using the same chipset.

Conclusion

For this ASUS motherboard review, if you are a AMD and Windows Vista lovers, then the ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition is definitely a good buy. As for XP users (or other OS), the M2N32-SLI Deluxe will be a better choice.

Check out Asus M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition at TigerDirect now!