Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: First ATI RD580

Final Words

The Asus A8R-MVP was a board that was brilliantly positioned by Asus for success. It performed well, overclocked well, and was very cheap. Selling into a market that had no compelling reason for choosing ATI instead, the A8R-MVP had just the right combination of features to attract a large number of buyers.

In some ways, however, the A8R-MVP made promises that it could not keep. The wonderful and fast overclocking required users to adjust down to a 2T Command Rate at high overclocks. Many enthusiasts did not like this requirement, despite the fact the Asus was as fast at 2T as most other boards at 1T. There was always the thought of how much faster it might be at 1T. The other major issue was the very limited vCore overclock options, which many made a bigger deal of than what facts or true performance justified.

Since the launch of the A8R-MVP, however, the AMD market has changed. Now, the ATI X1900XT is the fastest video card on the market instead of the nVidia 7800GTX. Instead of last generation's X850XT Crossfire, ATI's recent X1900XT Crossfire is now the fastest dual video solution that you can buy. The top end of the Socket 939 market is also now moving to dual x16 PCIe and ATI is finally introducing their RD580 dual x16 chipset. This is the chipset that will likely put ATI firmly on the AMD roadmap. Asus appears to understand these changes in the market, and the updated A8R32-MVP Deluxe has been positioned upward. Asus tells us the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is positioned as a high-end board, but the street price will be lower than the nVidia-based dual x16 A8N32-SLI and higher than the dual x8 nVidia A8N. This should translate into a selling price in the $150 to $200 price range once the high introduction prices begin to settle down. While this is higher than the initial estimates, it is still a lower price than the nearest competition based on nVidia chipsets.

In the process of updating the A8R-MVP to the A8R32-MVP Deluxe, Asus has also listened to buyers of the A8R-MVP. With the move to the new rock-solid ATI RD580, Asus has updated just about every complaint with the original A8R-MVP. There are even finer adjustments for many BIOS settings, voltage adjustment options have been greatly expanded from simple on/off to expanded adjustment ranges, the AD1986 6-channel HD codec was replaced by the even better 7.1 channel Realtek ALC882 HD with 103dB S/N ratio, a second full-speed PCIe Gigabit LAN was added, two more SATA2 ports were added with the excellent Silicon Image 3132, and the list goes on. Asus enhanced the A8R32-MVP and moved it from corporate pale brown to Deluxe black. Along the way, the range of BIOS options expanded to one of the best ranges of overclocking controls available on any Asus motherboard. The good things were also kept, like the full SATA2 3Gb/sec ULi M1575 Southbridge instead of the outdated ATI SB450, and the passive cooling without noisy fans on the chipset.

The big question then is: do all the changes improve performance? Based on our tests here, the answer is a resounding "YES". Where the A8R-MVP had to drop to 2T at around 260-265, the A8R32-MVP is stable at 1T Command Rate to 322 in our tests - the highest 1T overclock that we have measured with this processor/memory on air cooling. The board is also solid and exceptionally cool-running, even when pressed hard. We measured a Northbridge temperature of just 109F while looping 3DMarks at over 300FSB; the Southbridge was a similarly cool 107F. This was with passive cooling and the board under high-stress conditions. This performance is really more a compliment to ATI's RD580 chipset than to this Asus design.

The bottom line is that the updated A8R32-MVP is an easy board to love. It will cost more than the A8R-MVP, but it also delivers more. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe provides the best dual x16 video performance that you can currently buy. A pair of X1900XT video cards in Crossfire mode is the current best in video, and the Asus A8R32-MVP drives this video package effortlessly when coupled with an appropriate high wattage power supply. The feature set is competitive with any Socket 939 available and also includes on-board high-definition audio that is not available on current NVIDIA Dual x16 SLI boards. The design is also elegantly simple with an RD580 chipset designed from the ground up for high-speed overclocking and for Dual x16 video.

None of this means that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe is perfect for all users. There will be users who find that 3.2V vDIMM is not enough for their discontinued VX or BH5 memory chips, others will complain that only 1.65V vCore for a 1.35V processor is just not enough to drive their Opteron to 3.x GHz, and some will rightly find fault that there is no usable PCIe slot left if you run Crossfire with dual-slot video cards on this board. However, for most end-users and most enthusiasts, the A8R32-MVP will do exactly what they want to do with their AMD Athlon 64 processor. This even includes some of the highest and most stable overclocks that we have seen on a Socket 939 board.

We will need to see more RD580 boards before we know if the A8R32-MVP is that good or whether it is the RD580 chipset that is the goodness here. We can confess that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe has become a favorite board in the lab in a very short time and it is likely AMD board we would choose today - at least until the AM2 socket late in th esecond quarter, or until that possible killer DFI RD580 comes along. For now, this is a board worth searching out. It looks as if Asus has a young motherboard Engineer on a dynamic development team who is going to give some legends in the industry a run for their money.

Thanks for listening, Asus.