ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe @ [H] Enthusiast

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe - ATI's CrossFire Xpress 3200 motherboard chipset makes its debut in the form of the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe. This is the first ATI-based motherboard we would consider using ourselves. ASUS has built a solid product with a well-engineered chipset.

We have already had ASUS tell us they are getting reports of 340MHz CPU bus speeds from other reviewers and we have had ATI present to us a world record e-Penis2005 benchmark run, that was impressive to say the least, in a true Boogie Nights sort of way. While we are very happy with our overclocking results there are folks reportedly having better experiences. I still think we had a flaky BIOS issue and as always we suggest you check out our Overclocking and Cooling forums to see what results those guys are getting if overclocking is very important to you. When it all comes down to it, the HardForums are going to be a better measuring stick for overall overclocking limits than a bunch of motherboard reviewers.
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Please take time to read our review and share your thoughts with us!
 
Wow, finally a Crossfire board that actually works. Took long enough, but I think the wait was worth it. I wonder where ATI will go from here.
 
Hopefully we will see some non-CrossFire Xpress 3200 solutions that are just as robust in terms of overclocking.....actually I am sure we will.
 
Great review Dan and Kyle!!! But I have come to a conclusion about hard launches. They seem to be able to have retailers command very high prices for the hardware. I am well aware of supply and demand, but this [H]ardOCPer will be waiting till prices get realistic just like I did when the A8N32-SLI Deluxe came out. I can't justify paying $50 to $70 more to be the first on the block to have a new board.
 
LOL. Kyle said "retard."

In seriousness, we all know that there's always a chance of buying a lemon, but I am disturbed by the 1:1 RAM ratio issue, and confused by the fact that this problem seems to be isolated to [H]'s particular board.
An ATi chipset finally makes it onto a board that is worthy of going into a "dream" system, and I am happy to see it.
 
I was considering getting this board with an Opteron 165 and re-using my current XP-120 heatsink. Are you guys saying it won't fit, even if I use regular DIMMs?

Excellent review, btw.

*nm. I found that the A8R-MVP works ok with the XP-120, and the layout around the CPU on the A8R32-MVP looks identical.*
 
Excellent review Kyle and Dan!! Now i just need to afford a second X1900XTX. But I am going to get this board as soon as the price drops a little. :)
 
jebo_4jc said:
LOL. Kyle said "retard."

In seriousness, we all know that there's always a chance of buying a lemon, but I am disturbed by the 1:1 RAM ratio issue, and confused by the fact that this problem seems to be isolated to [H]'s particular board.
An ATi chipset finally makes it onto a board that is worthy of going into a "dream" system, and I am happy to see it.
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I worked with this board for about 8 solid hours trying to get around this 1:1 bus issue. At an ATI event last week in San Francisco with other edtiors, there was no one else that had this issue. (Remember both Dan and I had the same issue with seperate hardware setups, same physical motherboard though.) I spoke with ATI and ASUS about the issue and no one else had seen the same problem. Given all of this, I take this to be an isolated issue. We will see what happens.

Not the first time that I have seen issues that no others have.
 
This is definitely good news, I've always been a fan of the new Asus boards. I woner why they wont try the same heat-pipe setup of the AN8-32 and PND32?

Ever since the X1900's have come out, I have been eye ATI for a new video card, but I am an AGP user, and I noticed that none of the cross-fire boards were really any good.. So I was worried because I'd be getting an nvidia chipset based board and not be able to use cross fire at all.

yeah upgrade options just went up! woohoo!
 
Mazgazine1 said:
This is definitely good news, I've always been a fan of the new Asus boards. I woner why they wont try the same heat-pipe setup of the AN8-32 and PND32?
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from what i gather, the heat-pipe setup just isn't needed... the ati chipset just runs cooler...
 
BuBBa said:
from what i gather, the heat-pipe setup just isn't needed... the ati chipset just runs cooler...
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You are correct, it simply is not needed.
 
BuBBa said:
from what i gather, the heat-pipe setup just isn't needed... the ati chipset just runs cooler...
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That was my experience as well. The chipset was always at a resonable temperature. Warm to the touch to be sure, but not hot enough to burn.

The most exciting thing is, now there is a real choice over NF4 solutions. The Xpress 3200 is shaping up to be an awesome solution. This board really is also the A8N32-SLI's equal. Though I did get better OC'ing results out of the NF4, others on the web are reporting better OC'ing results with the Xpress 3200 than Kyle and I got. (As stated in the review.)
 
uzor said:
Yeah, but you have to admit that the heatpipe on the chipset of the other board really does look cool, and isn't that half the reason to upgrade, anyways? ;) :D

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It really does. The A8N32-SLI Deluxe is one of the coolest looking motherboards in production today.
 
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
 
gigatexal said:
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
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I would guess that that's going to be a different article.

 
so... when is this board going to be available?

i need to replace my shitball sapphire pure innovation.
 
gigatexal said:
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
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Wouldn't 2 1800XTX's be the equal to 2 7800GTX's?
 
ugh... zzf is charging $280, and the lowest price i can find is $250.

way to go asus, another RIDICULOUSLY overpriced motherboard.
 
Well, it's listed at ZZF already. I just checked Newegg, Monarch, and ClubIT, and none of them have it listed yet. It is early yet, hopefully they'll get their sites updated later this afternoon.

 
maybe I was lazy and didn't really read the start of the review 0.0 but why didnt you guys show all tests with same cpus on different boards =O?
 
HardOCP Review said:
As for not showing an “apples to apples” graphs here, had we done that, you would not have taken time to read the important stuff above. wink I assure you the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is on par when it comes synthetically measured bandwidth, quite frankly giving us more than we probably can use in most applications.
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Apparently, they wanted us to read it? :confused: ;)

 
gigatexal said:
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
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No onboard video = No HDMI.

Anandtech did Crossfire testing, if you're interested.
 
Is this suppose to support the "dongleless" less Crossfire rumors that been floating around. Also would there be a Intel based version of this chipset? Or is ATI just going to leave Crossfire on Intel platforms to the 975x and 955x chipset?
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Is this suppose to support the "dongleless" less Crossfire rumors that been floating around. Also would there be a Intel based version of this chipset? Or is ATI just going to leave Crossfire on Intel platforms to the 975x and 955x chipset?
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I wish. Would be nice to save the extra $100 or so that the master card costs.

RD600 for Intel is supposed to launch sometime in the next couple of months, from what I've read.
 
gigatexal said:
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
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good luck seeing that review. all crossfire master cards are (for x1900) xt's.
 
BioPort said:
ugh... zzf is charging $280, and the lowest price i can find is $250.

way to go asus, another RIDICULOUSLY overpriced motherboard.
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I think it's more of an issue with ZZF raping the early purchasers as usual. Once it starts showing up on Monarch, Newegg, etc., I bet the price will drop pretty quick.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
maybe I was lazy and didn't really read the start of the review 0.0 but why didnt you guys show all tests with same cpus on different boards =O?
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I'm curious about this as well. It looks more like an FX-60 review than a mobo review as far as the benchmarks go.
 
electech98 said:
Wouldn't 2 1800XTX's be the equal to 2 7800GTX's?
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There is no X1800XTX. The top model is the X1800XT which is comparable to the 7800GTX 256MB.
 
gigatexal said:
No crossfire testing? What about HDMI stuff?

2x 1900XTX's vs 2x 7800GTX's would have been nice.
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We will leave real-world testing for Brent in video card evals. And frames per seconds comaprisons that don't equate to real-world performance to other sites...

That said, I did leave out something important in the review...

I tested two X1800XTs in a CrossFire configuration on this motherboard for days and days and days without issue.
 
Opie said:
I'm curious about this as well. It looks more like an FX-60 review than a mobo review as far as the benchmarks go.
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The benchmarks are really there to show you that the board performs and works correctly. This is stated in the review. Several years ago there could be a 5-10% difference in performance between motherboards of difference models and brands. Today since the memory controller is built into the Athlon 64 itself, the performance difference between boards is minimal to non-existant. In fact the difference is usually close enough to chalk up to testing variances rather than differences in the boards themselves.
 
BioPort said:
ugh... zzf is charging $280, and the lowest price i can find is $250.

way to go asus, another RIDICULOUSLY overpriced motherboard.
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Welcome to the United States and a system we call "supply & demand." Early adopters often pay higher preiums for products, this is NOTHING new. Remember ASUS has an exclusive currently and the consumer will pay for that right currently.

This board is never going to be cheap, but the prices will come down. So you stop being rediculous as they are just seeing what the market will bear. If they can't sell them that high, then the price will come down.

The CONSUMER controls the cost of items such as these to a large extent, if there is in fact inventory collecting dust.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
maybe I was lazy and didn't really read the start of the review 0.0 but why didnt you guys show all tests with same cpus on different boards =O?
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Because we would rather spend out time testing this one motherboard to see just how good it is than spend time testing a bunch of other motherboards to compare it to.

The memory controller is on the CPU, the huge factor of what used to carve a divide is gone off the motherboard. Motherboards on the AMD side of things are somewhat about speed, but it really is about about features and stability now days. We do enough testing to see if there are issues, if we see issues, then we will look further. All our testing showed the board to be scorchingly fast. But the fact is that SLI vs CrossFire comparisons of value do not wash out in frames per second benchmarking. That is a virtual e-Penis at best.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Is this suppose to support the "dongleless" less Crossfire rumors that been floating around. Also would there be a Intel based version of this chipset? Or is ATI just going to leave Crossfire on Intel platforms to the 975x and 955x chipset?
Click to expand...


The "dongleless" CrossFire I was referring to was the X1600 and X1300 variety. To my knowledge none of the current top end cards will ever offer it. I was specifically asked one of the GPU engineers if the 3200 PCIe bus was so optimized and better than NVIDIA's, why do they still need the dongle, and he replied that the PCIe bus could not support their current top end CrossFire setups in terms of bandwidth needed at high resolutions and high antialiasing.

I am not so sure there is a market for an Intel version of this chipset, and would not count on one being launched.
 
DISCLAIMER: I am for the most a Nvidia zealot, take this with a grain of salt before reading on!

I commend Asus/ATI for putting out a worthy CossFire mobo. Nvidia needs this kick in the jimmy to help knock them off their alter-of-allmightyness. With some <real> competition now, it will be interesting to see how and what Nvidia does. Real competition = good for us consumers!

Also, on a side note, I nearly spewed carbonated bevvie on my LCD when I read the "e-Penis2005 benchmark run" line on the last page of the review. PLEASE don't try to match that with a logo! :D
 
electech98 said:
Wouldn't 2 1800XTX's be the equal to 2 7800GTX's?
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Nope...

You test the best of company A's available hardware versus the best of Company B's available hardware.

Before the 1800 series we weren't saying "oh the 7800 series outclasses the X850 series so instead we will test the X850 against the 6800 series".

Me.
 
Jason711 said:
thats sort of a let down... how can ATi's AA be that much better? and resolution is resolution.. if nvidia can do it w/o a dongle they have no excuse..

i dunno... i just dont like the dongle.
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maybe im wrong on this but isnt nvidia's internal bridge the same as ati's dongle? just ones on the inside and ones on the outside?
 
id go as far as to say they are similar. nvidias being the better solution. though im not saying ATi's is inferior... so dont get me wrong.
 
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