Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: First ATI RD580
by Wesley Fink on March 1, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
General Performance
There is little in the performance of the Asus A8R32-MVP in Winstone benchmarks that stands out. The Asus board is competitive with the best Socket 939 Athlon 64 boards that we have tested. We have already established in past motherboard reviews that the ATI chipset competes well with other AMD chipsets.
With the Memory Controller on the Athlon 64 processor, Winstone benchmarks are no longer very revealing of motherboard performance. In fact, we see boards that are tweaked for best gaming performance are often near the bottom of a tight range of benchmark performance numbers. The Winstone tests themselves are rapidly becoming dated, and are no longer supported by ZD Labs or Veritest. While Winstones are still useful in providing real world performance data, we will be dropping them from our motherboard test suite soon.
We were never completely comfortable with PCMark04, but PCMark05 is proving to be a much more useful overall performance benchmark. It is generally more sensitive than the older Winstones and PCM04 to recent improvements in PC architecture. PCMark05 results, in general, relate well to the other performance results that we find in our board tests - providing a quick and reliable snapshot of board performance compared to other motherboards.
There is little in the performance of the Asus A8R32-MVP in Winstone benchmarks that stands out. The Asus board is competitive with the best Socket 939 Athlon 64 boards that we have tested. We have already established in past motherboard reviews that the ATI chipset competes well with other AMD chipsets.
With the Memory Controller on the Athlon 64 processor, Winstone benchmarks are no longer very revealing of motherboard performance. In fact, we see boards that are tweaked for best gaming performance are often near the bottom of a tight range of benchmark performance numbers. The Winstone tests themselves are rapidly becoming dated, and are no longer supported by ZD Labs or Veritest. While Winstones are still useful in providing real world performance data, we will be dropping them from our motherboard test suite soon.
We were never completely comfortable with PCMark04, but PCMark05 is proving to be a much more useful overall performance benchmark. It is generally more sensitive than the older Winstones and PCM04 to recent improvements in PC architecture. PCMark05 results, in general, relate well to the other performance results that we find in our board tests - providing a quick and reliable snapshot of board performance compared to other motherboards.
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Beenthere - Monday, February 20, 2006 - link
No flames at Anandtech. Asus is the mfg. and the one responsible for delivering a proper vcore circuit design, using quality components, etc.Don't shoot the messenger for stating the facts. If Asus didn't have design and engineering problems their mobos wouldn't have these confirmed issues reported by numerous hardware review sites.
arswihart - Sunday, February 19, 2006 - link
Do you have to use the same color RAM slots on ASUS boards for dual-channel, as shown in the pic in this review?Shimmishim - Sunday, February 19, 2006 - link
it's good to see you catch your mistakes from your previous reviews. i hope next time you'll take users comments/emails more seriously than just brushing it off simply as "others can do it..." other than that. this board looks great! its a shame all this good stuff is coming out 1/2 quarters before AM2 is being released.godrod - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
I need to know on this board if you only have one video card (x1800XT) can you put it into the upper PCI-E slot closest to the CPU socket or does it have to go into the lower slot like the SD480 boards.Wesley Fink - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
A single video card can go into either x16 PCIe slot. We tried both slots and it will work wekk in either.arswihart - Sunday, February 19, 2006 - link
this looks nice, I haven't moved from AGP yet, this may just make me do itBeenthere - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
After Asus's false advertising of the A8R-MVP as being designed for "Serious Overclockers"; After Asus's failure to fix the long list of defects on the A8R-MVP which include 1T memory, Vcore instability, BIOS issues, etc.; After Asus's failure to acknowledge the known problems with the A8R-MVP; After Asus's refusal to even discuss the problems of the A8R-MVP with customers; After Asus's refusal to provide a proper BIOS upgrade to correct the defects in the A8R-MVP; After Asus's denial that the A8R-MVP mobo even existed after people bought it; After Asus's refusal to provide the same BIOS to consumers that they provided to Anandtech...there will never be another Asus product purchased by our company. Asus can stick their entire product line where the Sun don't shine. They've burned us for the last time. They may think they got away with defrauding consumers with the defective A8R-MVP mobos but they are in for one big surprise.
DanaGoyette - Sunday, February 19, 2006 - link
Refusal to provide the same BIOS...Hey, that gives me an idea! I wonder if Anandtech still has their A8R-MBP -- if they do, they should make a bios backup and post it!
matthewfoley - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
If any of you read the article they offered anyone who emailed them a copy of the same bios that they used. If you really want it I can get it for you.DanaGoyette - Sunday, March 5, 2006 - link
Oh, I don't even have the board, but shouldn't it be easy to post the BIOS on the site rather than just through e-mail?