X-bit labs

ASUS A8R-MVP Mainboard Review (page 9)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/06/2006 | 01:26 PM ]

Testbed and Methods

In conclusion to our today’s discussion of ASUS A8R-MVP mainboard I would like to offer you the detailed performance report. And since this mainboard differs from all other solutions on the same chipset by the ULi M1575 South Bridge, we will run the tests in a few additional benchmarks to give you a better idea of the solution performance. We will also pay special attention to the performance of different subsystems of the platform, which will allow us to make a more indepth conclusion about its features and efficiency.

We will compare ASUS A8R-MVP against one of the most famous Nvidia nForce4 Ultra based platforms: DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D, and against ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire mainboard equipped with the default ATI SB450 South bridge – DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR.

So, as a result, we assembled the following test platforms:

• AMD Athlon 64 3800+ CPU (Venice, 2.4GHz, 512KB L2).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS A8R-MVP (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire);
• DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire).
• 2048MB DDR400 SDRAM (OCZ PC4000 EB Dual Channel Platinum Edition, 2x1024MB, 2-3-2-10).
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT graphics card.
• Western Digital Raptor WD740GD HDD (SATA150).
• Windows XP SP2 OS.

The memory subsystem parameters were all set at their defaults.

Performance

USB 2.0

As we have already mentioned in our reviews before, the USB 2.0 interface implementation is a weakness of ATI’s south bridges. However, ASUS A8R-MVP mainboard features a different chip onboard, a South Bridge from ULi. We decided to see how well the USB 2.0 is implemented by ULi, so we measured the USB bus bandwidth and CPU utilization during data transfer along this bus to and from Maxtor OneTough 250GB hard disk drive.

The results of our tests indicate that ULi M1575 South Bridge is free from the USB 2.0 implementation issues typical of the ATI SB450. So, I have every right to conclude that ASUS A8R-MVP has definitely won from acquiring a new South bridge, and not only from the functionality point of view.