Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Asus A8V Deluxe: Features and Layout
| Asus A8V Deluxe - Revision 2.0 Motherboard Specifications |
|
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | VIA K8T800 PRO/VT8237 |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 300MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| CPU Ratios | 4x - 20x in 0.5x increments |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Auto, 66.66/33.33, 75.4/37.7 |
| HyperTransport | Auto, 200MHz to 1GHz (1x-5x) |
| Core Voltage | 0.80V to 1.80V in 0.025V increments |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.1V increments |
| AGP Voltage | 1.5V, 1.6V |
| V-Link Voltage | 2.5V, 2.6V |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Unbuffered Memory to 4GB |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 5 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/IDE RAID | 2 SATA 150 drives by VIA VT8237 Can be combined in RAID 0, 1, JBOD PLUS 2 SATA by Promise 20378 |
| Onboard IDE | Two Standard VIA ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) PLUS 1 IDE 133/100/66 by Promise 20378 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by VIA VT8237 2 IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports by VIA VT6307 |
| Onboard LAN | Gigabit Ethernet by Marvell 88E8001 |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC850 8-Channel with SPDIF |
| Tested BIOS | 1006 Beta 2 |
When Asus first introduced the A8V Deluxe it was the only Socket 939 board we had received with no AGP/PCI lock. Asus did not advertise an AGP/PCI lock and, in fact, it was not even listed as an option. When we talked with Asus about why they would leave out such a key feature of the VIA K8T800 PRO chipset, we were told Asus had concerns about the stability of the feature, and would not release a board with a lock until they were confident of the stable operation of the feature. While we did receive several prototypes with impressive performance and a working lock, Asus US did not give us the go-ahead that these interim designs would ever become production boards. For that reason, we did not believe it was fair to AnandTech readers to review an excellent design that they might never see in production.
Several weeks ago, Asus advised that they had completed a new Revision 2.0 with a number of board refinements and a working PCI/AGP lock that would soon be released. We had been very pleased with the revisions of the A8V we had evaluated, so we had great expectations of Revision 2.0. As you will see in the performance numbers and overclocking of the Asus A8V we were not disappointed.
The A8V Deluxe is the top-of-the-line Asus board for Socket 939, as you see reflected in the feature set. The A8V can be considered an update of the successful Asus K8V with the significant addition of the VIA K8T800 PRO chipset with, finally, a working PCI/AGP lock. Asus tells us that Revision 2.0 is more than just the addition of a production PCI/AGP lock, as they also used the update as an opportunity to refine the design.
As the Asus flagship Socket 939 the A8V Deluxe provides all the expected VIA K8T800 PRO/VT8237 features like 2-drive SATA RAID, 8 USB ports, and Hyper Transport to 1GHz. In addition Asus adds Marvell Gigabit LAN, The Promise PDC20378 RAID controller supporting 2 more SATA drives plus an additional IDE connector, Firewire, and the Realtec ALC850 8-channel codec. Asus calls their top boards AI, and the A8V includes a long list of proprietary Asus AI features like C.P.R., AI Net, AI BIOS, EZ Flash BIOS, and Q-Fan 2 fan-speed controls. The A8V also fully supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet.
Too often, we forget to mention that Asus is a huge proponent of Wi-Fi, and most of their boards include Wi-Fi capabilities. The A8V Deluxe is another Wi-Fi Home board, but the included adapter is now the higher-speed Wi-Fi G instead of the older and slower B standard. Asus even includes a desktop antenna to ease your communication with a wireless router or to serve as host for other Wi-Fi computers.
The overclocking controls are excellent in their range as we have come to expect on Asus boards. Noteworthy are the ratios in fine 0.5x ratios which makes OC fine-tuning that much easier on 939 CPUs. The CPU voltage also covers a very wide range from 0.8V to 1.80 volts. Our only complaint here is that 300 CPU Clock is a little short for a board that can do 289 at 1:1 memory, and the memory voltage controls are really limited at a top of 2.8V when we have performance memory warranted to 3.0V. Otherwise the variety and range of BIOS adjustments is excellent.
The layout of the A8V Deluxe is excellent. Both the 20-pin ATX and the 4-pin 12V connectors are on board edges and don't interfere with the CPU. The IDE connectors are in our preferred upper right edge of the board. Some will hate the floppy edge connector, but we liked getting it out of the way, and the floppy is also a connector many users don't use any way. The 4-dimm connectors, for up to 4GB of Dual-Channel memory, are well clear of the AGP 8X slot when changing memory. Asus is an advocate of quiet, failure-free passive chipset cooling, and you will see that in the massive heatsink used on the Northbridge. There's little to complain about in the layout of the Asus A8V Deluxe Rev.2.
Rear panel I/O is also very complete, including 6 audio mini jacks, both optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, 4 USB, LAN, Firewire, 1 serial port, parallel port, and the usual PS2 keyboard and mouse ports. We were particularly pleased to see easily accessible optical and coax SPDIF ports and wish other manufacturers paid as much attention to this feature as Asus has in their recent board designs.
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harsaphes - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
just set up my a8v board. no go on firewire, will not see ipod or external firewire drive. any idea?...bad board maybe?kd4yum - Thursday, August 5, 2004 - link
Fender - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
The first words in this review confirm that you should never buy a VIA product before they revised it! (KT266 to 400 saga anyone?)Also, it's oddly that Hyperions used here are 8 months old...
It could be interesting if you include, in your tests, any possible issue concerning OS installation or updating drivers (from the CD included in the box to the updated drivers from the manufacturer's site) because this is what happens to most buyers out there. Remember that you're testing a 64bit CPU with a 32bit OS, and drivers development will be a further support insurance.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
#79 - Page 13 is corrected. That error slipped past 3 proofreaders. Thank you for alerting us.Sidewinder0010 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
the k8t neo2 overclocking page has a typo that was throwing me off"much lower than the 290 on the K8T Neo2"
That should be changed to k8n neo2
Compddd - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
Wesley, did Asus say when the A8V Rev 2.0 will be hitting Retail Stores like Fry's, Best Buy, etc?thebluesgnr - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
How does the lower bandwidth (4900Mb/s) affect real world performance?One more thing, perhaps the MSI K8T Neo2 Platinum references should be changed to MSI K8T Neo2-FIR? That's the name of this board on MSI's site, there's no mention of it being a Platinum board. And here's a link of all the boards in the Platinum series: http://www.msicomputer.com/pressrelease/platinum.a...
Off-Topic: Wesley, will there be reviews on AnandTech of Socket A mobos based on the nForce2 Ultra 400Gb and VIA KT880 chipsets? They offer the exact same features of the mobos on this roundup, and with the new Semprons and the good XP-Mobiles I suspect a lot of your readers are still interested in this socket.
Sorry for the off-topic.
Wesley Fink - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
#75 - You are confusing boards as MSI had TWO boards in the roundup. We had no problems at all with the first or second K8N Neo2 (based on nForce3 Ultra) we tested, and that is the board that received the Gold Editors Choice. The MSI K8T Neo2, based on the VIA K8T800 PRO, was the problem board and we definitely did NOT give the K8T Neo2 an award.#74 - On page 5 we talk about the memory bandwidth differences in 1T and 2T command rates: "The best performance is at a Command Rate of 1T, and the Abit AV8 was completely stable at a 1T setting with 2 DIMMs. Standard memory bandwidth measured with SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP2 shows a 6000 MB/s bandwidth with 1T Command Rate compared to a 5000 MB/s bandwidth with a 2T setting." This is also mentioned on page 11: "While a full memory comparison of the nVidia and VIA chipsets is beyond the scope of this roundup, we did run several SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP2 runs of the memory test module. At default settings, and the aggressive 2-2-2-10 timings on the FX53, the nF3-250 Ultra showed memory bandwidth in the 6100 range for FPU and Float. The same test on the VIA K8T800 PRO boards showed memory bandwidth in the 6000 range. Performance of both chipsets at the 1T setting was very similar. 2T Command Rates, with everything else the same, generated bandwidths of 4900 to 5000Mb/second."
Z80 - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
Considering your statement "Our concern is based on the fact that we went through 3 K8T Neo2 boards before we got one that really worked" I'm surprised that you went ahead and gave the MSI board your gold award. I see that MSI is being sued for intentionally using capacitors that were made with an improperly-formulated electrolyte solution. My personal experience with MSI quality assurance was never good at least back in the day it wan't but maybe they have changed like you say OCZ has? I'll stick with Asus and Abit, thank you.SignalPST - Friday, July 30, 2004 - link
quote from the article:"We even found that all six of the tested motherboards performed at the fastest timings available and a 2T Command Rate with 4 DIMMs on board, so even that is a non-issue."
Does that mean that if 4 sticks of ram are installed, there won't be a performance hit and it will work just as fast as 2 sticks installed?