[H]ard review of Asus A8R-MVP

Hondaman4ever

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 4, 2004
Messages
114
As an owner of said motherboard, its conforting to know that you guys also experienced a pretty good motherboard as well. I wish to reach the high fsb speeds and thanks to your review I know exactly the ram sticks I should use. Overall an excellent review, hats off to you guys, keep up the good work! :cool:
 
This is going to come off as an overly naive question, but because until this review I haven't even considered an ATI chipset mobo so I haven't really looked at mobos with this chipset too deeply. Are there any problems running an Nvidia card (single slot, not ever planning on going SLI) on this mobo? I really love the fact that it's passively cooled, and I'm getting fed up with the chipset cooler on my current mobo, and so I'm thinking of switching to the A8R-MVP, but need to know that my video card will work before I make the switch. Thanks!

 
Working with that board was a pretty good experience overall. This was my first experience with the Crossfire chipset, and Crossfire video cards in general.

I hadn't seriously considered ATI chipsets in the past either. Though I would if I were going to use ATI video cards in Crossfire mode.
 
DamienThorn said:
This is going to come off as an overly naive question, but because until this review I haven't even considered an ATI chipset mobo so I haven't really looked at mobos with this chipset too deeply. Are there any problems running an Nvidia card (single slot, not ever planning on going SLI) on this mobo? I really love the fact that it's passively cooled, and I'm getting fed up with the chipset cooler on my current mobo, and so I'm thinking of switching to the A8R-MVP, but need to know that my video card will work before I make the switch. Thanks!


I used a 6800 Ultra for our testing and benchmarks in the review, and had no issues at all.
 
I'm curious about your overclocking results, did you notice any stuttering or any problems between using one video card versus crossfire? I'm considering getting the master card and am curious about system stability. Thanks.
 
11381520283eIbPsy1tJ_7_5.gif


Here we have a split. The FX-57 based A8R-MVP nets a loss. When powered by a X2 4800+, the A8R-MVP simply out muscles the NVIDIA board. The DOOM 3 engine has traditionally been very kind to NVIDIA-based GPUs so seeing that extended to an NVIDIA-based chipset is not surprising. Again, the performance differences are so small that we do not think they point to anything wrong with the chipset implementation.

Is the A8R X2-4800+ benchmark number wrong?
 
Hondaman4ever said:
I'm curious about your overclocking results, did you notice any stuttering or any problems between using one video card versus crossfire? I'm considering getting the master card and am curious about system stability. Thanks.

No I did not see any issues in-game. I beat on it pretty hard to try and get it to crash with CrossFire enabled and ran a couple days of extra stability testing on it. It never faltered anywhere that I thought it should not. Those X1800XTs tend to get pretty hot after baking for 6 hours of full load, so them crashing in a DX app is not a surprise.
 
Talonz said:
11381520283eIbPsy1tJ_7_5.gif




Is the A8R X2-4800+ benchmark number wrong?

Those numbers are correct. What you are seeing here is some funky dual cpu driver stuff (these are the drivers that are supposed to take advantage of dual core processors). Remember these benchmarks are done at 640x480 to unload the video card as the bottleneck, so they in NO WAY reflect real world gaming. Those benchmarks are run to more or less see if something is wrong, rather than how right something is. Hope that makes sense. (And FYI, I still run ALL the gaming and application benchmarks myself on every motherboard review you see published here.)
 
Hondaman4ever said:
I'm curious about your overclocking results, did you notice any stuttering or any problems between using one video card versus crossfire? I'm considering getting the master card and am curious about system stability. Thanks.

Like Kyle, my experiences with the A8R-MVP's stability in Crossfire mode wer excellent. I had it running for hours and hours and never experienced any faults or crashes. Crossfire really actually impressed me considering that it hasn't been around for nearly as long as SLI.

Except that whole goofy dongle thing. I am not overly fond of it.
 
So when can we expect a review of the A8R32? :)

Thanks for posting the review, it got me searching, and now my GF is going to be pissed at me when she comes home and I'm putting together a new system... Is it alright if I deflect the blame?

Hah
 
excelent...

step 1: order hardware
step 2: ????
step 3: find someone to blame

the operation WILL be a sucess!!!
 
well operation ordered complete....
operation annoy girlfriend complete....
sigh. I wanted a monitor first... then new computer for him

:p
 
ya... starchyld's my gf... i don't know who told her i was upgrading, but i'm going to have to fix them with some ductape next time i find them sleeping...

now i have to buy her an lcd, not to mention half of my main system... will that do as a bribe?


the hidden cost of the upgrade suddenly became much much clearer...
 
I just got this board and am having serious issue in getting my wireless Belkin pre-N card to work, the drivers get installed fine and the OS sees the card, how ever i am getting the following error in device manager.
This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system. (Code 12)

I have disabled everything that i do not intend on using even a cd rom and an extra HD. and still the error is persising. I have the latest bios and drivers ( new build ( today)) and nothing is working. I found an article on microsoft that says that this is resolved in W2K SP4, tried the rec from the article and nothing. The same belkin network card worked just find in my old MB, ASUS PS48x or something like that.

This board seems to loose some of it settings or go back to the defaul settings on its own.
things such as boot order, plug and play os, to name Just a few.

So, i headed over to ASUS's site, and I would guess that 80% of the posters on this board are ready to throw it in the trash and boycott ASUS products.

I picked up this board based on the H review and it is too early to be completely dis appointed, but, the fat lady is warming up. :mad:
 
Yeah, well as we plainly stated, this is the only Xpress 200 board that we have used that is not a POS. I did also test 2 of these boards with very similar results and both were stable platforms. That said, I do not have the resources to test boards for a wide range of compatibility issues. I am sorry that you are having troubles, but we do always suggest looking at company's forums for issues.

I will be dead on straight with you, there is no way I would put one of these in my personal system. I have personally seen too many issues with the chipset.

The next gen chipset is about to launch and will have retial product from Asus at lauch and if not then, very soon after. I would suggest you return this board as you are obviously still in the return period and wait for the next one.
 
Kyle,

Thanks for your response. This is a strange problem and I won't hold it against you. ;) can you recommend a crossfire board? I just purchased a new 1900Xt crossfire and really want to try it out.

Thanks,
Troy
 
Evidently Asus already has the x32 Xfire version in the hopper for those of you who are so inclined.

Also, if you want to use all the PCI slots with a 2 slot cooler, here's what you do: Boot with gfx card in the correct, lower slot. Set the Xfire option to enabled in bios. Shut down. Put the card in the upper slot and start up. Granted, by doing this you get a card running in a 8x PCI-e slot, but we all know that no current card is bandwidth limited by the 8 lanes and you get to use all your PCI slots.
 
superkdogg said:
Evidently Asus already has the x32 Xfire version in the hopper for those of you who are so inclined.

Also, if you want to use all the PCI slots with a 2 slot cooler, here's what you do: Boot with gfx card in the correct, lower slot. Set the Xfire option to enabled in bios. Shut down. Put the card in the upper slot and start up. Granted, by doing this you get a card running in a 8x PCI-e slot, but we all know that no current card is bandwidth limited by the 8 lanes and you get to use all your PCI slots.

Not sure that will work. The A8R-MVP boards can be finicky about how you install video cards. Though I didn't try the exact proceedure you are talking about.
 
ive had the A9R-MVP for 6 months now and i have had no problems, it has ben a great overclocker, and stable as hell. I have no clue why all these people complain aboutthe board. I find that it is a great board for crossfire on a budget.
 
Back
Top