ASUS A8R32-MVP: Taking the Overclocking Route via the 0404
by Gary Key on April 20, 2006 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Results
What good is an article without some actual performance numbers? If you dozed off during the last couple of pages, hopefully this information should be more enjoyable. While we are not providing numbers from the entire test suite there is enough information here to draw conclusions about what general settings work best in some of today's latest game engines.
In our tests it is clear a balanced setting between maximizing the CPU clock speed while maintaining a 1:1 memory ratio with the lowest latency possible will provide the best results. No surprises there but we really expected the 9x312HTT settings to perform better. This leads us to wonder if our issues with the 9X multiplier are creating lower than anticipated results. Our favorite and highly recommended setting with this CPU/Memory/Motherboard combination is the 12x256HTT setting as it performs within 1% of the 10x300HTT setting while allowing a larger variety of memory module options to be utilized. The system also requires lower memory and chipset voltages with the added benefit of better memory timings when using higher performance modules.
In essence, you are placing your system's performance capability primarily on the CPU's ability to overclock instead of the CPU and Memory overclocks when operating at the 10x300HTT setting. There is some additional overclocking headroom on this board at the 12x256HTT setting while we just barely eked by with the 10x300HTT setup. A 12x260HTT (or higher) setting should match or exceed the 10x300HTT setup in actual application and game benchmarks.
When comparing the top results generated by the 10x300HTT setting to the stock settings we see a CPU speed increase of 25%, memory clock speed of 50%, and Sandra memory benchmarks increasing by 34%. However, this does not directly translate into the same percentage improvements in the game benchmarks. We notice an increase of 23% in Q4, 12% in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, 5% in F.E.A.R., and 22% in Serious Sam II. It is obvious that F.E.A.R. is GPU constrained while the balance of games respond very well to increases in both CPU clocks and memory bandwidth. At the stock CPU/Memory settings we overclocked our EVGA 7900GTX from 650/800 to a safe 690/850 and were rewarded with 112fps compared to our top 114fps score in F.E.A.R.
What good is an article without some actual performance numbers? If you dozed off during the last couple of pages, hopefully this information should be more enjoyable. While we are not providing numbers from the entire test suite there is enough information here to draw conclusions about what general settings work best in some of today's latest game engines.
In our tests it is clear a balanced setting between maximizing the CPU clock speed while maintaining a 1:1 memory ratio with the lowest latency possible will provide the best results. No surprises there but we really expected the 9x312HTT settings to perform better. This leads us to wonder if our issues with the 9X multiplier are creating lower than anticipated results. Our favorite and highly recommended setting with this CPU/Memory/Motherboard combination is the 12x256HTT setting as it performs within 1% of the 10x300HTT setting while allowing a larger variety of memory module options to be utilized. The system also requires lower memory and chipset voltages with the added benefit of better memory timings when using higher performance modules.
In essence, you are placing your system's performance capability primarily on the CPU's ability to overclock instead of the CPU and Memory overclocks when operating at the 10x300HTT setting. There is some additional overclocking headroom on this board at the 12x256HTT setting while we just barely eked by with the 10x300HTT setup. A 12x260HTT (or higher) setting should match or exceed the 10x300HTT setup in actual application and game benchmarks.
When comparing the top results generated by the 10x300HTT setting to the stock settings we see a CPU speed increase of 25%, memory clock speed of 50%, and Sandra memory benchmarks increasing by 34%. However, this does not directly translate into the same percentage improvements in the game benchmarks. We notice an increase of 23% in Q4, 12% in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, 5% in F.E.A.R., and 22% in Serious Sam II. It is obvious that F.E.A.R. is GPU constrained while the balance of games respond very well to increases in both CPU clocks and memory bandwidth. At the stock CPU/Memory settings we overclocked our EVGA 7900GTX from 650/800 to a safe 690/850 and were rewarded with 112fps compared to our top 114fps score in F.E.A.R.
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SLI - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
New BIOS v502. Available here:ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...-MVP%20DELU...">ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...-MVP%20DELU...
abakshi - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Anything new for the A8R-MVP?I'm having some performance issues with my system (A64-X2 4400+, A8R-MVP, 2 GB OCZ EL Platinum DDR400, 250GB WD 7200/16/SATA2, ATI X1800XT 512, Enermax 450W, Win XP SP2).
Specifically, it multitasks very poorly in Windows -- e.g. whenever I insert a CD in the drive, the system basically freezes until the autoplay is done reading. Despite the dual-core A64 setup, it's actually worse at multitasking than my older P4 2.8C / 865PE (P4P800-D) machine. I've tried formatting and reinstalling Win XP, swapping out RAM sticks, different HDDs, etc.
Games are generally fine, but I do have some stuttering issues, and benches are lower than they should be. I set the RAM timings manually to spec at stock clock (no OC until this is fixed) and made sure everything else was set up right -- no effect.
The board's been disappointing, and I've seen a lot of other people have issues with it. I've had so many solid Asus Intel-based boards (P4P800-D, P4C800-D, P4T533-C, etc.), and I saw AT and others' reviews of this, so I figured it would be a halfway decent board. It's only faster than my old P4 system in games -- and that too, probably from the video card boost more than anything (X1800XT vs 9800 Pro).
Gary Key - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link
We have discovered stuttering issues in games and internet applets when utilizing the ADI on-board audio along with the latest version of JAVA 1.5 being loaded on the system. It has been tracked down to the ADI audio driver. Asus is working with ADI on a fix.
Are you using the AMD X2 driver or Microsoft Dual-Core patch? If not, you will get stuttering and lower than normal performance in certain games and applications.
Please email us and we can work on your issues with you directly.
goinginstyle - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Any updates?XrayDoc - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Are you sure your tested revision number was 1.3G? I just bought the same board from Newegg. It is a revision 1.03G.Gary Key - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Sorry about that, 1.03G, article corrected. :)mino - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
AFAIK K8 memory controler operates in synchronous mode all the time - there is no such a thing as an asynchronous mode in this architecture.What you referred to was ratio between clock generator frequency and memory frequency. However memory freq. depends only on the CPU freq. and memory divider employed, clockgen(also called FSB in BIOS-es) freq is irrelevant here as far as memory performance is concerned.
I hope you consider this in the future when you refer to various memory speed ratios tested.
Gary Key - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
I appreciate the comments. We fully understand the technicalities of the K8 memory architecture and would have utilized the "correct" terminology. In doing so our sentence structures would have turned into small paragraphs. ;-) We knew our terminology would be an issue with certain readers. However, we decided to go with synchronous or 1:1 as the majority of people are extremely familiar with this terminology when discussing memory settings, right or wrong. I will see about adding an additional statement clarifying the architecture design and setup.
FireTech - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Gary, I know you're busy but what's the rough timeframe for the All Crossfire MB Round-up appearing?Gary Key - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Hi,The lab is backed up right now. ;-) The DFI article will be out next week, Abit following in about a week we hope (board delay). If you want Intel CrossFire we also have the little Yonah that could article coming up shortly.
Thanks....