Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: First ATI RD580
by Wesley Fink on March 1, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Asus A8R-MVP was a board that was brilliantly positioned by Asus for success. It performed well, overclocked well, and was very cheap. Selling into a market that had no compelling reason for choosing ATI instead, the A8R-MVP had just the right combination of features to attract a large number of buyers.
In some ways, however, the A8R-MVP made promises that it could not keep. The wonderful and fast overclocking required users to adjust down to a 2T Command Rate at high overclocks. Many enthusiasts did not like this requirement, despite the fact the Asus was as fast at 2T as most other boards at 1T. There was always the thought of how much faster it might be at 1T. The other major issue was the very limited vCore overclock options, which many made a bigger deal of than what facts or true performance justified.
Since the launch of the A8R-MVP, however, the AMD market has changed. Now, the ATI X1900XT is the fastest video card on the market instead of the nVidia 7800GTX. Instead of last generation's X850XT Crossfire, ATI's recent X1900XT Crossfire is now the fastest dual video solution that you can buy. The top end of the Socket 939 market is also now moving to dual x16 PCIe and ATI is finally introducing their RD580 dual x16 chipset. This is the chipset that will likely put ATI firmly on the AMD roadmap. Asus appears to understand these changes in the market, and the updated A8R32-MVP Deluxe has been positioned upward. Asus tells us the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is positioned as a high-end board, but the street price will be lower than the nVidia-based dual x16 A8N32-SLI and higher than the dual x8 nVidia A8N. This should translate into a selling price in the $150 to $200 price range once the high introduction prices begin to settle down. While this is higher than the initial estimates, it is still a lower price than the nearest competition based on nVidia chipsets.
In the process of updating the A8R-MVP to the A8R32-MVP Deluxe, Asus has also listened to buyers of the A8R-MVP. With the move to the new rock-solid ATI RD580, Asus has updated just about every complaint with the original A8R-MVP. There are even finer adjustments for many BIOS settings, voltage adjustment options have been greatly expanded from simple on/off to expanded adjustment ranges, the AD1986 6-channel HD codec was replaced by the even better 7.1 channel Realtek ALC882 HD with 103dB S/N ratio, a second full-speed PCIe Gigabit LAN was added, two more SATA2 ports were added with the excellent Silicon Image 3132, and the list goes on. Asus enhanced the A8R32-MVP and moved it from corporate pale brown to Deluxe black. Along the way, the range of BIOS options expanded to one of the best ranges of overclocking controls available on any Asus motherboard. The good things were also kept, like the full SATA2 3Gb/sec ULi M1575 Southbridge instead of the outdated ATI SB450, and the passive cooling without noisy fans on the chipset.
The big question then is: do all the changes improve performance? Based on our tests here, the answer is a resounding "YES". Where the A8R-MVP had to drop to 2T at around 260-265, the A8R32-MVP is stable at 1T Command Rate to 322 in our tests - the highest 1T overclock that we have measured with this processor/memory on air cooling. The board is also solid and exceptionally cool-running, even when pressed hard. We measured a Northbridge temperature of just 109F while looping 3DMarks at over 300FSB; the Southbridge was a similarly cool 107F. This was with passive cooling and the board under high-stress conditions. This performance is really more a compliment to ATI's RD580 chipset than to this Asus design.
The bottom line is that the updated A8R32-MVP is an easy board to love. It will cost more than the A8R-MVP, but it also delivers more. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe provides the best dual x16 video performance that you can currently buy. A pair of X1900XT video cards in Crossfire mode is the current best in video, and the Asus A8R32-MVP drives this video package effortlessly when coupled with an appropriate high wattage power supply. The feature set is competitive with any Socket 939 available and also includes on-board high-definition audio that is not available on current NVIDIA Dual x16 SLI boards. The design is also elegantly simple with an RD580 chipset designed from the ground up for high-speed overclocking and for Dual x16 video.
None of this means that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is perfect for all users. There will be users who find that 3.2V vDIMM is not enough for their discontinued VX or BH5 memory chips, others will complain that only 1.65V vCore for a 1.35V processor is just not enough to drive their Opteron to 3.x GHz, and some will rightly find fault that there is no usable PCIe slot left if you run Crossfire with dual-slot video cards on this board. However, for most end-users and most enthusiasts, the A8R32-MVP will do exactly what they want to do with their AMD Athlon 64 processor. This even includes some of the highest and most stable overclocks that we have seen on a Socket 939 board.
We will need to see more RD580 boards before we know if the A8R32-MVP is that good or whether it is the RD580 chipset that is the goodness here. We can confess that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe has become a favorite board in the lab in a very short time and it is likely AMD board we would choose today - at least until the AM2 socket late in th esecond quarter, or until that possible killer DFI RD580 comes along. For now, this is a board worth searching out. It looks as if Asus has a young motherboard Engineer on a dynamic development team who is going to give some legends in the industry a run for their money.
Thanks for listening, Asus.
The Asus A8R-MVP was a board that was brilliantly positioned by Asus for success. It performed well, overclocked well, and was very cheap. Selling into a market that had no compelling reason for choosing ATI instead, the A8R-MVP had just the right combination of features to attract a large number of buyers.
In some ways, however, the A8R-MVP made promises that it could not keep. The wonderful and fast overclocking required users to adjust down to a 2T Command Rate at high overclocks. Many enthusiasts did not like this requirement, despite the fact the Asus was as fast at 2T as most other boards at 1T. There was always the thought of how much faster it might be at 1T. The other major issue was the very limited vCore overclock options, which many made a bigger deal of than what facts or true performance justified.
Since the launch of the A8R-MVP, however, the AMD market has changed. Now, the ATI X1900XT is the fastest video card on the market instead of the nVidia 7800GTX. Instead of last generation's X850XT Crossfire, ATI's recent X1900XT Crossfire is now the fastest dual video solution that you can buy. The top end of the Socket 939 market is also now moving to dual x16 PCIe and ATI is finally introducing their RD580 dual x16 chipset. This is the chipset that will likely put ATI firmly on the AMD roadmap. Asus appears to understand these changes in the market, and the updated A8R32-MVP Deluxe has been positioned upward. Asus tells us the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is positioned as a high-end board, but the street price will be lower than the nVidia-based dual x16 A8N32-SLI and higher than the dual x8 nVidia A8N. This should translate into a selling price in the $150 to $200 price range once the high introduction prices begin to settle down. While this is higher than the initial estimates, it is still a lower price than the nearest competition based on nVidia chipsets.
In the process of updating the A8R-MVP to the A8R32-MVP Deluxe, Asus has also listened to buyers of the A8R-MVP. With the move to the new rock-solid ATI RD580, Asus has updated just about every complaint with the original A8R-MVP. There are even finer adjustments for many BIOS settings, voltage adjustment options have been greatly expanded from simple on/off to expanded adjustment ranges, the AD1986 6-channel HD codec was replaced by the even better 7.1 channel Realtek ALC882 HD with 103dB S/N ratio, a second full-speed PCIe Gigabit LAN was added, two more SATA2 ports were added with the excellent Silicon Image 3132, and the list goes on. Asus enhanced the A8R32-MVP and moved it from corporate pale brown to Deluxe black. Along the way, the range of BIOS options expanded to one of the best ranges of overclocking controls available on any Asus motherboard. The good things were also kept, like the full SATA2 3Gb/sec ULi M1575 Southbridge instead of the outdated ATI SB450, and the passive cooling without noisy fans on the chipset.
The big question then is: do all the changes improve performance? Based on our tests here, the answer is a resounding "YES". Where the A8R-MVP had to drop to 2T at around 260-265, the A8R32-MVP is stable at 1T Command Rate to 322 in our tests - the highest 1T overclock that we have measured with this processor/memory on air cooling. The board is also solid and exceptionally cool-running, even when pressed hard. We measured a Northbridge temperature of just 109F while looping 3DMarks at over 300FSB; the Southbridge was a similarly cool 107F. This was with passive cooling and the board under high-stress conditions. This performance is really more a compliment to ATI's RD580 chipset than to this Asus design.
The bottom line is that the updated A8R32-MVP is an easy board to love. It will cost more than the A8R-MVP, but it also delivers more. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe provides the best dual x16 video performance that you can currently buy. A pair of X1900XT video cards in Crossfire mode is the current best in video, and the Asus A8R32-MVP drives this video package effortlessly when coupled with an appropriate high wattage power supply. The feature set is competitive with any Socket 939 available and also includes on-board high-definition audio that is not available on current NVIDIA Dual x16 SLI boards. The design is also elegantly simple with an RD580 chipset designed from the ground up for high-speed overclocking and for Dual x16 video.
None of this means that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is perfect for all users. There will be users who find that 3.2V vDIMM is not enough for their discontinued VX or BH5 memory chips, others will complain that only 1.65V vCore for a 1.35V processor is just not enough to drive their Opteron to 3.x GHz, and some will rightly find fault that there is no usable PCIe slot left if you run Crossfire with dual-slot video cards on this board. However, for most end-users and most enthusiasts, the A8R32-MVP will do exactly what they want to do with their AMD Athlon 64 processor. This even includes some of the highest and most stable overclocks that we have seen on a Socket 939 board.
We will need to see more RD580 boards before we know if the A8R32-MVP is that good or whether it is the RD580 chipset that is the goodness here. We can confess that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe has become a favorite board in the lab in a very short time and it is likely AMD board we would choose today - at least until the AM2 socket late in th esecond quarter, or until that possible killer DFI RD580 comes along. For now, this is a board worth searching out. It looks as if Asus has a young motherboard Engineer on a dynamic development team who is going to give some legends in the industry a run for their money.
Thanks for listening, Asus.
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ocyl - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
Page 4 mentions that there is an Asus board called "A8N32-MVP." Does anyone know where to find more information about this board, if it does exist?Gary Key - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
It should have read A8N32-SLI and has been corrected. Thank you.Darthb0b0 - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
I'd like to see numbers of both X1800 and X1900 Crossfire, on both the A8R and A8R32 (four sets of numbers for those who are math impaired). I am much more interested in how this new board, and its price premium, affect Crossfire performance.nicolasb - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
Can we have some comparable benchmarks for 7800GTX 512 as well as 7800GTX? And 7800GTX 512 in SLI mode too.whippingboy79 - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
**"The NVIDIA 7800GTX and ATI X1900XT are readily available for purchase in the marketplace. Since the 7800GTX 512 is not available for sale anywhere and has not been available for weeks, it seemed unfair to compare x1900XT results to products that are not available for purchase."**Please don't take this personally Anandtech but your reviews are seriously flawed...
This article should of only been written if the proper hardware was available for testing.
If that was the case then the article should review a X1800XT Crossfire vs the 7800gtx 256 SLI in the A8R32-MVP.... These cards are based on competing technologies 2-3 quarters ago..... The X1900 series cards are based on current technologies as are the new 7900 from Nvidia and some might throw in the 7800gtx 512-
Back in december the 7800gtx 512 was readily available on launch- give the 1900xt another 2 months and we will see what the availability of the product looks like. Even now the 1900xt is in low quantities.. give it another 3 weeks and well you get the picture.
I have been finding that some of the Anandtech writers are not objective enough. They have a habit of allowing thier personal views and tastes on hardware flaw their testing and results. Sadly I can still recall the days when Anandtech was a viable resource.....
dali71 - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
That's funny, I just checked three of the main reputable online vendors and found that they all appeared to have plenty of the X1900 series in stock and priced reasonably as well (reasonable being a relative term when referring to high end video cards). I then checked the same three vendors for the 7800GTX 512. Only one actually had listings for the cards, but they were all backordered and ridiculously overpriced as well. So since you are obviously a biased Nvidia fanboi, why don't YOU give it another 3 weeks to 2 months and see if you can extract your foot from your mouth when X1900s are still readily available.Sh0ckwave - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
Seriously you guys need to stop flaming every article Anandtech publishes. Get over it, if you don't like their reviews don't read them. IMO Anandtech is still the best and always has been.Matthews316 - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
I would have liked to see a side by side graph comparison of these two boards with crossfire enabled. That way we could get an idea if the dual x 16 PCI-E slots on the A8R32-MVP made any significant gaming performance improvement over the dual x 8 PCI-E slots on the A8R-MVP. Otherwise I really enjoyed the review, and I'll probably be purchasing one of these boards once the price settles down a little.Beenthere - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
Well, well, well - the disappearing Asus Mobo Hype. I lost count is this the forth or fifth hype posting in the past ten days that has been up, down, up, down, up, down and a real jerk around?After the abortion A8R-MVP Asus shipped as a designed for "serious overclockers" piece of garbage, they can stick the A8R32 where the Sun don't shine. The A8R-MVP was the most over-hyped under performing mobo ever sold and IMNHO a fraud as it doesn't come even close to delivering the advertised performance Asus claims.
I find it amazing how Asus feeds Anandtech all the info. they desire but Asus can't or won't fix the defective A8R-MVP mobos that have documented memory incompatibility issues, 1T timing issues, vcore voltage issues, MVP card issues and more. Asus has the balls to dump the defective A8R-MVP mobo into the marketplace and then flat refuse to even support this malfunctioning mobo or even discuss with their customers any solution to the long list of problems. Asus completely ignores its customers and has provided no BIOS upgrades that fix any of the listed problems above. Once upon a time we had good Asus mobos but for the past several years Asus has been unable to deliver any reliable, properly functioning mobos. It took them four different SLI models to get an SLI32 mobo that performs equal to every other mobo companies SLI X16 mobo, so you gotta believe Asus has engineering issues.
As if to illustrate how gullible some consumers are the A8R32 addresses some but not all of the problems on the A8R-MVP that according to Anandtech and Asus were not problems at all. This must be like with MICROSUCKS where bad security code isn't a defect it's a "feature". It's amazing the B.S. that is published to suck up to unscrupulous manufacturers. The disguised damage control is for the naive who don't have a clue. If a S939 mobo can't run standard industry DIMMS in 1T and the vcore voltage varies 100 mV or more, the mobo is a problem child. The fact that Asus still deletes the proper vcore voltage options in BIOS on the A8R32 tells me they still have engineering problems IMNHO.
Sorry Wes but these Asus reviews are not objective scientific tests any more they are just marketing hype. It looks like you're way too close to Asus to tell the whole story instead of regurgitating the glowing marketing hype. When Asus recalls all of the defective A8R-MVP mobos and replaces them with properly functioning A8R-MVP mobos, then they'll prove they have their act together and that they care about their customers. Otherwise IMNHO they are just an unscrupulous company dumping defective goods into the marketplace to defraud consumers.
Looks like there is little value in reading Anandtech any more as it's become unreliable just like THG did after Tom left. We ain't buying the hype and Asus can shove their entire product line where the Sun don't shine. They may have made short term profits by defrauding A8R-MVP buyers with defective goods, but in the long term they will lose a lot of customers to other mobo makers.
theprodigalrebel - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
i was almost paying attention to your post, but you lost me when you wrote 'microsucks'.stupid troll.