ASUS A7V600: Feature-Laden – Value-Priced
by Wesley Fink on August 17, 2003 10:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASUS A7V600: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the ASUS A7V600 in these areas and configurations:1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, which was conducted by running the FSB at 212MHz; and
2. Memory stress testing, which was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with two DIMM slots filled, and at 400MHz with three DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As standard practice, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the ASUS A7V600 was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.In addition, we ran several other tasks - data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel - while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECViewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. While we were able to boot and run some tests at speeds as high as 218MHz FSB at default voltage, 212MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the ASUS without encountering any reliability issues.
Memory Stress Test Results:
The memory stress test is very simple, as it tests the ability of the A7V600 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Corsair TwinX LL modules support:| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (2/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | Turbo |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | 4 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
The A7V600 did not exhibit the lowest timings that we have seen on a KT600 board. However, ASUS provides charts that show some DDR400 modules are only recommended for one DIMM operation, while others can support three DDR400 DIMMs. Our Corsair 3200LL V1.2 DIMMs were not listed on either chart. Nonetheless, we were still able to achieve stable operation with two DIMMs at 2-3-6-2 timings. Keep in mind here that six is the lowest RAS Precharge setting available on this KT600 board, so these settings were only slightly slower than the fastest timings that could possibly be set. Despite several attempts, we could not get stable performance at 2-2-6-2, even with Turbo turned off. We should point out that this latest V1.2 of Corsair 3200LL has SPD timings of 2-3-6-2, and not 2-2-6-2 like the now-discontinued V1.1. However, we checked V1.2 at 2-4-2-2 timings with several nForce2 boards in dual-channel mode, and it performed fine at those aggressive timings in the nForce2 Ultra 400 boards. The memory controller of the KT600 chipset is obviously a different design than the nForce2 Ultra 400 controller. However, also keep in mind that lower memory timings do not always translate into the fastest memory performance. Lowest memory timings is just one means of comparing motherboards. It is most useful when comparing boards based on the same chipset.
Filling all three available memory banks is much more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing two banks filled. In fact, on the ASUS A7V600, we were doing something ASUS does not recommend. While ASUS makes it clear that the A7V600 is designed to support a maximum of two DDR400 DIMMs (and only one DIMM with some brands), we wanted to determine for ourselves if three DDR400 DIMMs could work at 400MHz. While three DDR400 DIMMs would not work at CAS2, with or without Turbo timings or other timings adjustments, the three DIMMs did work at DDR400 by slowing CAS slightly to 2.5:
| Stable DDR400 Timings (3/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | Turbo |
| CAS Latency: | 2.5 |
| Bank Interleave: | 4 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
We were pleased to see that the ASUS ran with stability using three DDR400 DIMMs. We did have to slow the CAS timing a bit for stable performance, so you should keep this in mind if you plan to run three DDR400 DIMMs against ASUS’ current recommendations. It’s worth stating again that the real world performance difference between aggressive memory timings and more relaxed memory timings, such as SPD, are often very small.
We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. None of the three stress tests created stability problems for the ASUS A7V600 at these memory timings.
While the A7V600 was very stable in our tests, it required slightly slower memory timings than we have needed for other KT600 motherboards.
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unclefreaky - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
on your asus a7v600 review and testing what where all the bios settings on it. i have one and a radeon 9800pro and it will not run it beeps and no boot i can get to bios but not to windows ive trie everything with no luck and tried other videocards but no luck unless they run at 4x agpim not the only person with this issue and it would help out greatly if you could provide those bois settings we get no reply from asus tech and ati and via havent suggested anything helpful
please help the world and i on this issue
Anonymous User - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
Somebody asked who uses these motherboards. Well, I've got the Asus A7V600 and until now I haven't seen any motive to feel bad about it. I've read some articles, all of them say the board has a poor performance. 'It's very disappointing' it's said. So, I went to see the benchmarks' results and the difference between the best scores (Nforce 2 based boards included) and the Asus board. I've found it's usually less than 5/6%. Does anybody really notice the difference when running any application or game? What about stability? Isn't there any kind of score for stability? If my system crashes I'll certainly notice. And I haven't had any crash till now, even with my Barton 2500+ running at 2.2 GHz. By the way, in Portugal, Asus A7V600 costs about 30% less than Asus A7N8X Deluxe and about 40% less than MSI KT6 Delta. And the Oscar goes to...sprockkets - Monday, August 25, 2003 - link
Whoops on the post. According to the instructions, you setup raid on the built in bios for it by via.According to Intel, kernel 2.4.20 has built in support for SATA drives, at least for their 865 chipset, but should work fine for VIA.
sprockkets - Monday, August 25, 2003 - link
KF - Friday, August 22, 2003 - link
If Windows can use any HD without a HD controller driver, it is a new one on me. Same for linux. This goes for SCSI as well as IDE. What Windows can do is use a driver that is built in, and some common controllers (like VIA, SIS, Nvidia)emulate a basic old HD controller that goes way back, although to get higher performance the manufacturers provide other drivers. Adaptec, Promise and Highpoint need unique drivers even for their straight HD controllers, let alone the RAID versions, although Windows XP at least has lots of drivers for these. I believe linux is the same. That would make all HD controllers "just typical cheap Taiwanese software based crap."These mobo reviews virtually never check to see if the RAID works even in Windows. No one knows for sure what functions are done in software; people are just guessing or assuming. In general, manufacturers only provide drivers for Windows based systems, and some individual has to write a driver for linux.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - link
SuSE linux like windows should be able to raid it without hardware support, though can't say for sure?Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - link
Is the Serial RAID hardware or software based? I mean can I configure it via BIOS and install some odd OS like Linux or SCO unix that will just see 1 hard drive and have it work and copy the data to the second drive like real hardware raid? or is this just typical cheap taiwanese software based crap?And also you say its value based but what happens when I pair this up with a geforce video card? wouldn't any possible saving of money disappear into that to the point I would of been better off with a Nforce2 and get the extra performance to boot. When you claim/think about a value based PC's you gotta look at the overall picture of the machine you are building.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - link
Jeff, stop posting, it's already known fact that Gigabyte's nForce2 U400 and other U400 motherboards perform exactly the same as Epox and ASUS's boards. Your request is useless, waste's Anandtech's time, and is getting old quite frankly.Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - link
#10 has a very good point. I suggest skipping the "tags" instead to make room for some real information. The ones like "Purple, Practical, AND Performance!" feels a little bit like the cheesy article tags over at Toms Hardware. Though theirs are probably unbeatable due to the sometimes apparent language translation factor.Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
just a minor request - please put the chipset somewhere in the review title like you guys used to - it makes searching through old reviews MUCH easier (ie searching for all KT600 reviews)