X-bit labs

ASUS A7V880 Mainboard Review. First Look at VIA KT880 Chipset (page 8)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 04/19/2004 | 09:05 AM ]

This way, the VIA KT880 chipset appeared a very good basis for overclocker’s mainboards. No secret that most NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 based mainboards have the maximum FSB frequency lying between 220-230MHz. Our today’s hero, ASUS A7V880 on VIA KT880 managed to easily reach this top and failed overcome it only because of the non-finalized BIOS.

In conclusion I would like to say a few words about the hardware monitoring implemented on ASUS A7V880. Firstly, I have to point out a few things that disappointed us to a certain extent. Unfortunately, there are only two cooler connectors. Other than that there are no more reproaches. Only one more thing appeared not very pleasing: the CPU die temperature is measured with the thermal resistor located under the processor socket. Although the overheating protection system works using the thermal diode built into the processor core.

Theoretically, this mainboard should also feature Q-Fan technology, which allows adjusting the fan rotation speed depending on the CPU temperature, in order to reduce the noise level. Moreover, ASUS A7V880 requires several parameters to configure this technology: the CPU temperature when the fan starts at its minimal rotation speed, the power required to start the fan at its minimal speed, and the CPU temperature when Q0Fan is disabled, so that the fan starts rotating at its maximum speed. This way, Q-Fan of ASUS A7V880 is a potentially very flexible technology, which allows reducing the noise level of the system based around this mainboard. However, the current BIOS version doesn’t have this technology implemented in full yet. So, let’s wait for the new BIOS versions.

Testbed and Methods

Well, now it’s high time we got to one of the most important and interesting parts of our today’s test session. The major intrigue implies: will the new dual-channel VIA KT880 chipset manage to catch up with NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400? Or the additional memory channel appeared of no help to VIA? Let’s find this out now…

To answer the questions set above, we assembled two testbeds: one on NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and one on VIA KT880. in both cases we took solutions from one and the same mainboard maker – ASUS. So, the overall configuration of the test systems looked as follows:

• AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU (2.2GHz, 400MHz FSB);
• Mainboards: ASUS A7V880 (VIA KT880, BIOS 1001.018) and ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400, BIOS 1010);
• 2x256MB DDR400 SDRAM from Corsair with 2-2-2-5 timings. The memory worked in dual-channel mode;
• ASUS RADEON 9800 XT graphics card;
• Western Digital WD400JB HDD.

The tests were run in MS Windows XP SP1, the BIOS of both mainboards was set for the maximum performance. Moreover, I would like to point out that the actual FSB frequency on both boards was a little beyond the nominal value and equaled 202MHz instead of the nominal 200MHz. This is a peculiarity of all ASUS’ mainboards.