Asus PC-DL Deluxe: 875 with Dual Xeons
by Wesley Fink on September 6, 2003 12:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Asus PC-DL: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
ASUS' RMA policy is pretty straight forward as follows:
“Please provide the following information so that we may process your request for warranty repair service. Once we have obtained that information from you, we will issue an RMA # and provide the proper shipping instructions. Please read and provide all of the information below. We cannot complete your request, if all of the information below is not
PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH:
1. THE MODEL & SERIAL NUMBER OFF OF YOUR PRODUCT model (name of product) serial# (10 digits/characters long, no dashes).
ASUS Computer International (USA) is a warranty repair service center. Please contact place of purchase for credit, refund, upgrade, or advance replacement. Asus does not provide these services under any circumstances.
2. YOUR FULL NAME/NAME OF COMPANY (Only provide company name if the shipping address is to a company).
3. YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS (no PO boxes please).
4. YOUR DAYTIME PHONE/FAX NUMBER.
ASUS Does not cover physical damage. Please refer to page 2 of your users manual. There is a $15.00 fee to replace a broken socket. There is a $40.00 fee to repair all other physical damage. If a product is not repairable, the product will be sent back to the customer. If a product is sent in with physical damage and is not accompanied with a payment, the product will be rejected and customers will not be reimbursed for shipping charges. A payment can be made by check, money order (payable to ASUS), or a credit card#. The payment must be sent in with the damaged product. Customers from Canada must make payments with a credit card number.”
This is a fairly straightforward RMA policy, with nothing unusual that stands out. You're asked for quite a bit of information in regards to exactly what has to be RMA’d, but this is not unusual in any of the RMA procedures we have seen. Everything else is self-explanatory.
ASUS' tech support response time did not improve from the last time we looked at an ASUS motherboard. At that time, ASUS had yet again missed our 72 hour deadline, but they finally did reply to our email request 18 days after it was sent. The same pattern was repeated this time around, with ASUS again completely missing our 72 hour deadline. After so many missed tech support emails, it's clear your expectation with ASUS should be that your technical problem may get a reply some day!
While ASUS' RMA policy isn't too different from the other top tier motherboard makers, their tech support is still severely lacking. We sincerely hope Asus will finally take these issues seriously, and make efforts to fix a problem that has driven away many potential customers.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
This review makes, me wonder...is it possible to use two P4 2400/800 CPU's on this board, maybe with some kind of adapter. Those P4's would likely outperform this Xeon setup and possibly also the Opteron, with a very interesting price tag, even if these adaptors would cost $50 each.And if anyone should see an Intel engineer, just tell him we want a 1000 MHZ FSB for those Xeons, as the i875 would surely pass all validation test at this speed, and the PC4000 memory is already available.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
The 3200+ Athlon we use for testing AMD IS a Barton core. The 3.0 is the Intel CPU we have been using for benchmarking Intel.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Why not just make a dual 800FSB P4 system. With HT activated you'd get 4 virtual processors, something that XP Pro can handle.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
i see commens like like its they use thw 3.2Hz p4 but what performance they all expect? 80% from 3.0 to 3.2Ghz?>Lonyo - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
"we are reviewing the PC-DL, and comparing it to the performance from the current top Pentium 4, Barton, and Opteron/Athlon64 boards that we have tested"Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): Intel Dual Xeon 3.06 (1 Mb Cache) 533FSB
AMD Opteron Socket 940 at 2.0GHz (9x222) 444FSB
Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0GHz (800FSB)
No Barton in there, the top Opteron (or so I thought) was the 1.8GHz, and the top P4 is the 3.2 as far as I'm aware.
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Dual Xeons is a joke. The P4 is starved for bandwidth in a SINGLE processor configuration at 533Mhz FSB. What makes anyone think TWO processors can handle being that starved? It's like eating spaghetti through a straw -- you can get a few noodles, but it's faster to go buy a fork. And, last I heard, Intel wasn't planning on bring a 800Mhz FSB to the Xeon, just a stopgap 667Mhz FSB. Almost any task can be performed better by a single P4 3.0Ghz processor then dual Xeons of any speed on any platform. Xeons make no sense as a consumer platform all. And, with Opteron here, they make no sense as a server platform, either.When can I see my Athlon64 vs. Pentium 4 benchies? I hardly think an overclocked Opteron counts. After all, the 2.0Ghz Athlon64 isn't going to run with dual-channel memory, anyway. Can you say Socket 754? Luckily, AMD is already moving to Socket 940/939 for future releases. Mmm. 64-bit goodness.
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
I'm always dissapointed in dual cpu system reviews, as they never show how the systems multitask. I would like to see the FPS in UT3 while encoding a movie at the same time. Can you play games while burning a DVD? I would like to see the performance while performing multiple tasks at the same time.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Yea, I'll bet Intel thought they could Spin dual Xeons as a viable filler until Prescott arrives some day. Reality shows there is no way the P4 or dual-Xeons are gonna hold a candle to a single Opteron/A64 let alone a dual system. Intel is hurting as their 90 nano stuff is gonna be too little, too late, and the suckers draw a pile of current = a ton of heat. Who wants that in a system thats' too expensive and that under performs??? They should just scrap the Prescott and work on something worth releasing to the market before it's obsolete.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Somehow this review looks eerily familiar. Hrm, wonder why :P.