ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe - Review

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ASUS A8R32-MVP DELUXE REVIEW:

Reviewer Names: Muhammad Javed Khan (j@iDi) & Sheikh Farhan (Dany)

Date: 05-03-2006

Introduction:

With the advent of RD480, ATI laid a foundation for a dual card gaming solution, namely the Crossfire. However their initial success was limited, mainly due to some serious hardware limitations presiding within the chipset. The chipset didn’t make it out to the enthusiast market segment mainly due to poor I/O performance, memory command rate being 2T at higher overclocks and getting a poor refresh rate at higher resolutions.

But at that very time the ASUS A8R-MVP was the sole motherboard providing a stable solution. It shunned the buggy ATI Southbridge, replacing it with the former ULI’s much stable core logic. Although the motherboard was rock solid and a magnificent overclocker but it was still plagued by some problems. First of all, while using cards in Crossfire the PCI Express lanes were divided into 8X each and secondly the motherboard reverted to a command rate of 2T at a higher FSB.
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Now with the ASUS A8R32-MVP, ASUS has eradicated all of the things plaguing its previous model number. The board is really conducive to overclocking and features complete 32 PCI Express lanes, enabling it to give dual 16X bandwidth at the same time to cards in Crossfire.

MAIN FEATURES OF A8R32-MVP DELUXE

AI Life Series motherboards combine lifestyle and personal computing. Several new and improved innovations are included to create a peaceful environment, by reducing noise and temperature. Don’t change your way of life for a computer. Instead, let the ASUS Life Series improve the quality of your life.

The motherboard supports AMD 939-pin single-core Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Opteron and dual-core Opteron / Athlon 64 X2 processors with 2MB / 1MB / 512KB L2 cache, which is based on 64-bit architecture. It features 2000 / 1600 MT/s Hyper Transport Bus, dual-channel un-buffered DDR400 memory support and AMD Cool 'n' Quiet! Technology.

64-bit computing, the next generation technology to replace the current 32-bit architecture, delivers advanced system performance, faster memory access and increased productivity. This motherboard provides excellent compatibility and flexibility by supporting either 64-bit or 32-bit architecture.

The ATI™ Crossfire™ Xpress 3200 Northbridge supports simultaneous operation of two external PCI Express x16 graphics cards and delivers the best performance for overcolcking. It's simply the fastest graphics platform solution to date.

ATI's Crossfire boosts image quality along with rendering speed, eliminating the need to scale down screen resolutions to get the high image quality you want. Crossfire ignites with the higher antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, shading, and texture settings you desire. Adjust your display configurations, experiment with your advanced 3D settings, and check the effect with a real-time 3D-rendered preview within ATI's Catalyst™ Control Center to rule your Crossfire system.

Designed for serious overclockers

It offers ways to raise system performance inch-by-inch and step-by-step to achieve maximum performance! This is about getting the most out of your machine and taking pride in your customized computer.

vDIMM - Take control of how much power is going into the memory modules. ASUS gives you 12-step voltage control to the DIMM

vCore - Find out "exactly" how much power your CPU needs. Fine-tune it with 0.025 volts at a time!

vNB - Northbridge provides independent voltage adjustment at 0.1 V increment for core power, HT bus and PCI Express bus.

SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)

- FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 400MHz at 1MHz increment
- PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment

Boost performance when you need it the most!

Applications such as 3D games and video editing demand a huge chunk of system resource. Inject "nitrous oxide" into your CPU! The patented AI NOS™ (Non-delay Overclocking System) technology intelligently detects system load and automatically boosts performance for the most demanding tasks. Unlike other dynamic overclocking techniques, AI NOS™ reacts much faster to satisfy your unending need for speed.

ASUS AI NET2 remotely detects cable connection the second you turn on the system, and any faulty connections are reported back up to 100 meters at 1 meter accuracy.

This latest technology, PEG (PCI Express Graphics) Link Mode, is a unique feature that enables users to boost graphics card performance for superior video quality. PEG Link allows users to raise GPU and VGA memory throughput via the motherboard BIOS the same way system bus and memory bus are tweaked. PEG Link Mode enables powerful video performance on DX8 and DX9 applications. ASUS engineers carefully fine-tuned the parameters for every single PCI-Express card to provide system stability during high-speed graphics operation.

PCI Express is the latest I/O interconnect technology that will replace the existing PCI. With a bus bandwidth 4 times higher than that of AGP 8X interface, PCI Express x16 bus performs much better than AGP 8X in applications such as 3D gaming. PCI Express x1 and x4 also outperforms PCI interface with its exceptional high bandwidth. The high speed PCI Express interface creates new usages on desktop PCs e.g., Gigabit LAN, 1394b, and high-speed RAID systems.

The motherboard supports the next-generation hard drives based on the Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gb/s storage specification, delivering enhanced scalability and doubling the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval and saves. The external SATA port located at the back I/O provides smart setup and hot-plug functions. Easily backup photos, videos and other entertainment contents on external devices.

Q-Fan2

ASUS Q-Fan2 technology intelligently adjusts both CPU fan and chassis fan speeds according to system loading to ensure quiet, cool and efficient operation.

Dual Gigabit LAN
The integrated dual Gigabit LAN design allows a PC to serve as a network gateway for managing traffic between two separate networks. This capability ensures rapid transfer of data from WAN to LAN without any added arbitration or latency.

Stack Cool 2

Stack Cool 2 is a fan-less and zero-noise cooling solution offered exclusively by ASUS. It effectively transfers heat generated by the critical components to the other side of the specially designed PCB (printed circuit board) for effective heat dissipation.

Fanless Design

Cooling fans, though a popular thermal solution, also come with noise and malfunction likelihood. ASUS Motherboard's fanless concept is specifically created to provide a cool environment without all the baggage. ASUS has devoted special efforts to address the thermal issues across the motherboard, and most notably the areas that reside the CPU, power, Northbridge and Southbridge. The heat sinks and strategic board layout is tailor made to dissipate heat in the most efficient manner. With the addition of Stack Cool 2, users can even overclock without a noisy, bulky fan.

ASUS Crash Free BIOS2

The Crash Free BIOS2 feature now includes the BIOS auto-recovery function in a support CD. Users can reboot their system through the support CD when a bootable disk is not available and go through the simple BIOS auto-recovery process. ASUS motherboards now enable users to enjoy this protection feature without the need to pay for an optional ROM.

ASUS EZ Flash

With ASUS EZ Flash, you can update BIOS before entering operating system. No more DOS-based flash utility and bootable diskette required.

C.P.R. (CPU Parameter Recall)

When the system hangs due to overclocking failure, there is no need to open the case to clear CMOS data. Just simply restart the system, the BIOS would show the previous setting and then users can amend the CPU setting again.

InterVideo Media Launcher

ASUS motherboards, intensifying leadership in the IT industry, now bundle the versatile InterVideo Media Launcher. This multifaceted software set includes the latest multimedia software, bringing forth the multimedia features of ASUS motherboards to the best! (OEM version)

The motherboard and its packaging comply with the European Union's Restriction on the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This is in line with the ASUS vision of creating environment-friendly and recyclable products and packaging to safeguard consumers' health while minimizing the impact on the environment.

PHOTOSHOOT OF THE MOTHERBOARD

The Front Side:

Inside View

Bundled Software & Manual:

Accessories:

THE BOARD LAYOUT

As can be seen from the spec sheet displayed above, Asus have hauled some major upgrades in this incarnation of the ATI Crossfire Xpress 200 chipset. Instead of opting for the lame SB450 ATI southbridge, Asus preferred to stick with ULi’s M1575 southbridge, which was an instant success in the case of A8R-MVP board, whose initial releases were rather plagued with very poor performance penalties associated with SB450 southbridge.

It appears that Asus has used a black PCB, as they received some criticism and complaints from the consumers and board partners about the girlish looking orange PCB. This certainly is a pleasant change and is very slick & modern in appearance.

Two full x16 slots are being provided on the northbridge chip of the A8R32-MVP, while the southbridge is being used for other I/O tasks & operations. Four SATA2 connectors have been placed in parallel, making enough room for long bulky cards to be accommodated easily withouth causing any hindrance for SATA2 cable installation. The IDE have also undergone some change, as the 2nd IDE is being placed at the upper right of the board. The most significant change, however, is the rearrangement of the slots between the 2 PCI-X16 slots,i.e, 2 PCI, 1 x1 PCIe slot as can be seen in the shot above.

The audio codec from the A8R-MVP has undergone a major upgrade,i.e, from a 6-channel AD1986A HD audio codec to the Realtek ALC882 (8-channel) HD audio codec. This HD codec is being regarded well for it’s decent sound performance, as Realtek has been hot on their heels with their monthly driver updates, with each release bringing a nice performance increment to an already excellent solution.

The ALC882 has superb specifications, providing five 24-bit stereo DACs and three 20-bit stereo DACs driving the multimedia features. All DACs provide sample rates to 192kHz and up to 4 channels of microphone input are supported. Signal-to-Noise ratio is specified to be greater than 103dB. Realtek features the ALC882 as a premium HD part.

As can be seen from the shot above clearly, the A8R32-MVP provides a full compliment of rear IO connectors, including both optical and coaxial SPDIF. The new connector to the right of the SPDIFs is for an external SATA device. Two Firewire ports are provided, but both are supported by an auxiliary slot bracket included in the A8R32-MVP package or with header connections to case Firewire ports.

ASUS A8R32-MVP DELUXE BIOS & OVERCLOCKING

The Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard, though not quite a super high-end board in itself, is packed with all the bells & whistles of an high-end board,i.e, anything an overclocker enthusiast could wish for is in it. What’s even more surprising & astonishing, you don’t even need to drop you Hyper Transport Frequency at all from it’s default setting (5x). The claim of hitting 1.5G HTT speeds are true indeed, as it ran rock stable at that setting without any hiccups and stability issues 24/7. However, after 1.5+, we had to drop the multi of the HTT, but only to 4x, which when compared to it’s arch-rival’s nforce4 competing board, simply fails to boot after hitting 1G mark.

You may ask what’s the big fuss about hitting 1.5G+ mark? Well according to what internal sources say, the really obvious difference that it makes in performance that when you’re running high-end RAM modules at DDR600+ speeds, the bandwidth it provides for the system is limited by the extent of the HTT setting. By passing the limit of 1 GHz mark, the bandwidth no longer suffers from this limitation, resulting in maximum efficiency & bandwidth production.

Memory Timings

The most prominent feature of the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe is the inclusion of the 1T Command Rate setting, which was completely absent from it’s older brother ,i.e., the A8R-MVP. Although the A8R-MVP was very fast at 2T Command Rate, many of us expected that it would perform even better and faster, have it been equipped with 1T Command Rate option. We don’t know for certain whether it was due to hardware limitation of the RD480 chipset or some minor BIOS problems, as to date we haven’t seen a single BIOS for the A8R-MVP to enable 1T Command Rate. However, Asus has listened to all the complaints and criticism it has received from its consumers and board partners, and voila, they’ve equipped the A8R32-MVP Deluxe with the settings the enthusiast community longer for.

CPU OVERCLOCKING

In case you were wondering about the overclocking capabilities of this board, this is where the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe truly shines. Now properly equipped with 1T Command Rate, we were able to fly our Venice 3500+ processor to an impressive 2.8 GHz with acceptable increments to voltage settings. The board offers you a multiplier setting as high as 25x meaning depending upon your processor, you could set the CPU multi as high as 25x. However, we haven’t tested this setting yet, as doing so may damage the processor. But, at a stock 11x multi, the processor touched an impressive 2.6 GHz mark, something which wasn’t possible with previous A8R-MVP and nforce4 boards on stock multi ratio.

Another plus point that Asus managed to score with this board is the removal of that tiresome 5-10 MHz FSB increment procedure. With the previous A8R-MVP board, it was not possible to overclock at once from an FSB of 200 to 250, doing so resulted in major stability problems. The only possible way was to overclock 10 MHz at a time and after booting into windows, reboot and repeat the same procedure. However, the A8R32-MVP completely removes this limitation, you can now finally overclock as much as you want, the way you want. It’s intelligent and efficient design lets you carry out your overclock either subtly or ruthlessly.

VOLTAGE SETTINGS

The Asus A8R32-MVP has certainly improved upon its older brethren, the A8R-MVP in terms of voltage settings, allowing to pump in more juice to your processor & system, should you require giving it more power in order to stabilize the system. The processor voltage defaults to certain volt settings depending on the revision of the CPU core you’re using, i.e., 1.35 for Venice, 1.40 for Winchester & 1.55 for ClawHammer.

Do take note however that when u enable Vcore voltage option, a menu appears showing you 3 options namely:

• Disabled
• +100mV
• +200mV
This corresponds to 0.1volts or 0.2 volts respectively should you decide to enable this setting. Be careful though, as if you enable 0.2V setting on your Venice, would result in an increment up to 1.65 volts, which is rather dangerous for a 1.35V processor, since there had been many incidents where many users have busted their Venice by giving it too much voltage. If you really need to give it more juice, don’t do it unless you have some decent setup for cooling the processor, as the processor heats up considerably after enabling this setting.
The Northbridge & Southbridge voltage options have also undergone refinements, now allowing for pumping more volts to both chips, as enabling it hardly made a difference in case of A8R-MVP.

P.E.G

The “P.E.G” mode, on certain GPU’s, speeds up the graphics rendering process of the GPU, which in case you are wondering, is the auto-overclocking of the graphics card. However, this is a bit alarming feature, since the board would overclock the graphics card without user intervention, so you’re better off overclocking the graphics card yourself through the drivers in windows environment.

HARDWARE MONITORING

Like its previous boards, nothing new is present here. However, this time around, Asus has finally gotten rid of the incorrect temp bug which plagued its earlier boards. Note that in BIOS, the system is under 100% load, therefore, the temps you see are higher as compared to when you seen them in windows. Nonetheless, Asus has hauled in some major aesthetics in the BIOS for this board, and to be honest, it simply bangs.

Test Configuration:

The shining Crossfire setup, and the very first to reach the shores of Pakistan.

O Boy! Ruby looks so glamourous !!!!

A single slot PCI remains for the poor old sound card.

PC Power and Cooling PSU gave out Stable rail readings throughout the testing period with the Crossfire setup and a massively overclocked system.

The Crossfire Dongle

Gaming Benchmarks:

3Dmark03 3.6.0

3dmark03 is an old benchmark, and now primarily CPU limited. However the Crossfire shows its utter domination. Please note that the 7800GT SLI was overclocked to 500/1.35 Ghz [Better than a 7800GTX 256mb at stock speeds]

3dmark05 1.2.0

3DMark05 is again highly CPU limited, but the domination of the Crossfire setup truely defines its crown as the king of dual GPU solutions.

3dmark06

3Dmark06 is the latest sequel of the 3dmark saga. This truely shows the pixel shading power of the Crossfire setup and the large bandwidth of the dual x16 pci express slots in the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe.

F.E.A.R

FEAR is one of the most taxing games to date, but our Crossfire system breezes through it.

QUAKE4

Conclusion:

The ASUS A8R32-MVP deluxe provides the best dual card performance to date, thanks to the x1900xt’s in Crossfire setup. The board is insanely fast and should be able to find the right market this time around. Enough features are packed in to ensure that enthusiasts and common PC users adopt the board readily. For people who were eager to upgrade to Crossfire, but were seriously limited by the boards available previously, this time around they don’t have any reason to wait any longer.

The Crossfire performance was simply enthralling. All the games we ran through the system, performed like a breeze. ASUS A8R32-MVP truely is a wonderful Crossfire setup and worthy of being chosen amongst the most high-end and enthusiast friendly dual GPU platforms.

Performance: 8.5/10
Stability: 9.0/10
Innovation: 8.5/10

Overall: 8.7/10

The ASUS A8R32-MVP recieves the wccf enthusiast award for extreme Crossfire performance.

Special thanks to ASUS-PK for providing out the samples for reviewing






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