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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
65 Comments
View All Comments
SuperStrokey - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
i assume that was not the gtx512 was it? If so wowDeathBooger - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?Web...">http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?Web...If you do a currency conversion it's $217USD. Some lucky guy actually got to buy it before they were supposed to sell it. http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=...">http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=...
Egglick - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Why would you use two different videocards when benchmarking a motherboard?? This really tells us nothing about the motherboards performance in relation to the others, because you have another huge variable.Wesley Fink - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
As we stated in the test setup we ran BOTH the 7800GTX and the X1900XT video card on the Asus A8R32-MVP. We reported both results so you could compare 7800GTX performance to the previous boards also tested with the 7800GTX. Since the X1900XT is the latest and fastest video card the results were included for Reference only - many would have asked for X199XT results if they were excluded.As someone else pointed out, when testing Dual X16 Video you have to run SLI on nVidia and Crossfire on ATI (or Intel).
andrewln - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
because you can not run SLI in Crossfire motherboardstuteja1986 - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Why didn't Asus include the cool feel as they did with the ASUS A8N 32-SLI. Like the 8-Phase Power and the cool looking Fanless Motherboard cooling system.mino - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Just wondering. maybe 8-phase is a waste for ~60 watt Athlon64s. Also why do a fancy(an expensive) "cool looking Fanless Motherboard cooling system" when chipset is cool and doesn not need one at all???I.m glad someone has a sense and doesn't produce third central heater in the system(after CPU & GPU).
Hoping SB600 will be a good one.
Wesley Fink - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
The RD580 chipset also ran very cool on this board, so there may not be the need for the more exotic passive heatpipe cooling used on the A8N32-SLI.Wesley Fink - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
The A8R32-MVP was designed to sell for a lower price - probably around $130 to $150, where the A8N32-SLI was designed to sell for $200+. While the A8R32-MVP isn't 8-phase, it actually overclocked ba bit better and gave up nothing to the more expensive and excellent A8N32-SLI in performance. This board can also run dual X1900XT cards in Crossfire mode.tuteja1986 - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
I wonder how much will it sell for and if it goes arround same price as Asus A8N 32-SLI (220ish). if it cost that much then i will end up buying DFI RD580 motherboard if its got no issue bugs like the 1st rev of DFI RD480 CRossfire.