ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe

[W1zzard]

ASUS was the first motherboard manufacturer to have an ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 motherboard ready. Some retailers even got their shipment early and were selling boards before the official Xpress 3200 launch. It seems ASUS has learned from the A8R-MVP and improved their board in many ways. If all boards with RD580 will work as good as the A8R32-MVP, NVIDIA better starts worrying.

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[oldschool]

Hey W1zzard,

Thanks for the detailed review.

Unfortunately the A8R32 looks like another rushed to market Asus mobo. VR-Zone has already identified BIOS and boot issues in addition to the improper HTT setting changes you noted. Asus' comments about not needing to "over voltage" to overclock your CPU means that they are still having engineering issues with their vcore circuits just like on the A8R-MVP, P5GL-MX, etc. which Sapphire, DFI, Abit etc., do not have on their mobos. It's no surprise these other brands of mobos have all the standard vcore voltage options and a lot more in the case of the DFI and Abit. Asus is just in denial about their vcore issues. I'll bet their warranty costs are getting pretty high as a result. At least Asus fixed some of the memory issues they had with the RD480 mobos.

With only one usable PCI slot with dual-slot Vid cards, the Asus A8R32 just don't cut it. Sapphires Crossfire and Crossfire ADV are even worse with only one or two PCI slots. Evidently in their haste to rush these RD580 mobos out the door before the AM2 socket mobos ship in June, the mobo companies just did a hack job on the RD580 mobo designs hoping the sheep will buy these impractical mobos.

Too little, too late, no thanks not for me.

 

[Marioace]

nice review w1zz.

i though that would have a better overclock

 

[TooFast]

Hey W1zzard,

Thanks for the detailed review.

Unfortunately the A8R32 looks like another rushed to market Asus mobo. VR-Zone has already identified BIOS and boot issues in addition to the improper HTT setting changes you noted. Asus' comments about not needing to "over voltage" to overclock your CPU means that they are still having engineering issues with their vcore circuits just like on the A8R-MVP, P5GL-MX, etc. which Sapphire, DFI, Abit etc., do not have on their mobos. It's no surprise these other brands of mobos have all the standard vcore voltage options and a lot more in the case of the DFI and Abit. Asus is just in denial about their vcore issues. I'll bet their warranty costs are getting pretty high as a result. At least Asus fixed some of the memory issues they had with the RD480 mobos.

With only one usable PCI slot with dual-slot Vid cards, the Asus A8R32 just don't cut it. Sapphires Crossfire and Crossfire ADV are even worse with only one or two PCI slots. Evidently in their haste to rush these RD580 mobos out the door before the AM2 socket mobos ship in June, the mobo companies just did a hack job on the RD580 mobo designs hoping the sheep will buy these impractical mobos.




Too little, too late, no thanks not for me.

speak for yourself, this board is great, rock solid!! no performance gains with dual 16x??? I dont know if that is true (3d 05 with dual 8x 12900) (dual 16x 14200????????) same video cards

 

[Tanquen]

When I use the P-ATA connections on the motherboard with any of the 2 DVD drives and/or 2 DVD burners that I have, the drive will read then stop and read then stop and everything freezes when it stops reading even the mouse can’t move when this happens. I have tried different cables and setting the drive as master, slave and cable select. Also, all drives are set to DMA mode 4.

This only happens with large file transfers from DVD or CD not from HD to HD. So far I have not noticed any pauses while burning discs, thankfully.

I found this issue when installing large games that come on multiple discs like Doom 3 and Age of Empires III. On my old system I could place each of the three discs in it’s own drive and start the install and it would move through each disc with out stopping. I found that on the A8R32 I get random pauses. It was not every drive or a particular disc. It kept happing on disc two of AgeIII so I put disc one into that drive and it happened on the first disc. I thought it had to do with that drive being on channel 2 of the P-ATA controller but after using just two drives on channel 1 it happened again.

Sometimes just after a pause the sound card would have continually generate popups stating that I had plugged in something new in one of the jacks. After the copy the sound card would be all messed up and I’d have to reconfigure what was plugged into each jack.

I spoke to ASUS (as they to not reply to emails) and they just said to try a different Motherboard or different RAM. Oh, I’ll just pull another one out of my… Aren’t they supposed to test this kind of stuff for me?

I’m sure it could just be my board but the issue seems much like the random spikes in the HD benchmarks and the pauses in many games before the 0311 BIOS came out.

I guess I’ll have top RMA the board but my guess is that the new board will do the same thing.

System:
CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX 60 2.6G 939P - CPU FAN Zalman CNPS 9500 LED
MEM 1Gx2 Mushkin 184P D500 991493R
MB ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe XPES320 939
Video Card X1900XTX 512M H190XTX512DVN
HD 160G ST 7K 8M SATA2 ST3160812AS (4 Drives in 2 RAID Arrays)
PSU 2 (Yes 2 power supplies) Silverstone SST-ST60F 600W RT
DVD-ROM Pioneer DVD-106S
DVD-ROM Pioneer DVD-???
DVD-RW Sony DRU-800A
DVD-RW Sony DRU-820A

HELP!

and thanks for any help.

Richard

 

[CjStaal]

How many PCI slots can you use when in crossfire?

 

[Tanquen]

How many PCI slots can you use when in crossfire?

I think you can have two. One below each video card. One is between the two video cars and is a squeeze but I read that a few have a SoundBlaster x-Fi card in that slot.

 

[CjStaal]

I hope your right...
I'm buying it....

 

[Tanquen]

I hope your right...
I'm buying it....

What are you going to put in them?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...deon XPRESS 3200 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

 

[Urlyin]

I think you can have two. One below each video card. One is between the two video cars and is a squeeze but I read that a few have a SoundBlaster x-Fi card in that slot.

Card in between would reduce air flow and bake if they are 2 x1900 ... lol

 

[CjStaal]

I am going to do dual watercooling.... I need inline rads though and I am putting my sound card and preferably a physx card in the pci slots

 

[Urbklr]

Most do overclock amazingly, some people get 350+ with this board. I have the AM2 version in another computer, she's good for 360FSB+.