Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: First ATI RD580
by Wesley Fink on March 1, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Ethernet Performance
The one area where the Asus A8R-MVP was mildly disappointing was in their choice of an Ethernet controller. Instead of using a PCIe LAN that is capable of providing full 1 Gb bandwidth, Asus used a PCI solution that will be limited in maximum speed by the PCI bus. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe keeps the PCI Ethernet, but it adds a second PCIe Ethernet controller capable of full bandwidth Gigabit LAN.
In practical terms, the PCI bus Ethernet is not much of a roadblock. It caps out about 700 Mb/s compared to the 950Mb/s capability of a PCIe solution. Since most broadband Ethernet connections barely tax 10Mb/s, this will really only matter to those who do sustained high-speed transfer of very large files over a true 1 Gb network - probably less than 1% of users. Still, PCIe Gigabit Ethernet is always a better solution, and it is good to see that Asus addressed this issue in the A8R32-MVP.
The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the AMD motherboards.
We set up one machine as the server; in this case, an Intel box with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and this seemed a reasonable choice to serve our Gigabit LAN clients. At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
The one area where the Asus A8R-MVP was mildly disappointing was in their choice of an Ethernet controller. Instead of using a PCIe LAN that is capable of providing full 1 Gb bandwidth, Asus used a PCI solution that will be limited in maximum speed by the PCI bus. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe keeps the PCI Ethernet, but it adds a second PCIe Ethernet controller capable of full bandwidth Gigabit LAN.
In practical terms, the PCI bus Ethernet is not much of a roadblock. It caps out about 700 Mb/s compared to the 950Mb/s capability of a PCIe solution. Since most broadband Ethernet connections barely tax 10Mb/s, this will really only matter to those who do sustained high-speed transfer of very large files over a true 1 Gb network - probably less than 1% of users. Still, PCIe Gigabit Ethernet is always a better solution, and it is good to see that Asus addressed this issue in the A8R32-MVP.
The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the AMD motherboards.
We set up one machine as the server; in this case, an Intel box with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and this seemed a reasonable choice to serve our Gigabit LAN clients. At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
Ntttcps -m 4 ,0,‹client IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:
Ntttcpr -m 4 ,0,‹server IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000At the conclusion of the test, we captured the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.
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BPB - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
This doesn't make sense: "there will never be another Asus product purchased by our company". Why would a business care about overclocking? A business should care about STABILITY.DigitalFreak - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
They should have moved the only PCI-E 1x slot to the left. They way it is now, you lose that slot when using a dual slot cooler in the PCI-E 16x slot closest to the processor. Hopefully that will be changed on the AM2 version of the board.aguilpa1 - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
a 7800 and 1900 this way we can better gauge the mean performance of the "board" with identical comparison to other previously tested boards because not everyone is going to run out and get a $600 1900 ATI just for this board.Wesley Fink - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
We DID test the A8R32-MVP with both the X1900XT and the 7800GTX. If you closely at the standard gaming performance graphs on p.9 you will see the orange bars are the A8R32-MVP test eith the X1900XT and the green bars are the same A8R32-MVP tests with the 7800GTX. The other board results are with the 7800GTX so if you compare the green bar to all the blue bars you are comparing 7800GTX performance on ATI and nVidia. In addition, all the bars are labeled with the test board and test video card to prevent confusion.This is explained in Test Setup on p.6, and in my comment above, "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. As someone else pointed out, when testing Dual X16 Video you have to run SLI on nVidia and Crossfire on ATI (or Intel)."
aguilpa1 - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
never mind, I see someone asked the same question, but were not given a reasonable answer anywaysBPB - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
This is exciting news. But I plan on getting the X1900 AIW, which won't do Crossfire. So, when are we going to see non-Crossfire (Xpress 200-type) versions of this chipset? In the end I may get this board, but I'm hoping I can save a few bucks by getting one without the added cost of Crossfire.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - link
RD580 is only available as the dual x16 version. With both x16 lanes off the north bridge you can't really leave out a chip, as you can in the nVidia version right now, and lower the price. The single X16 slot and dual x8 Crossfire will be provided by RD480.n7 - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Looks like a superb motherboard for the price!Zebo - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Look perfect to me. Black, high clocker, built like a tank and relativly inexpensive. I wish they had this two months ago - U seen my DFI chipset mod what a PITA to get silent chipset sitting right under card.:( Not only is ATI chispet seemingly cooler leaving us with passive solutions they clock at least as well if not better.Zebo - Friday, February 17, 2006 - link
Also the gap between PCIe cards is perfect to run water blocks too and well as nV/ATI silencers w/o touching or being cramped..