ASUS A8V-E Deluxe Mainboard Review: Meet VIA K8T890

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
03/16/2005 | 08:07 PM

Mainboards for AMD Athlon 64 processors with PCI Express bus support are getting more and more popular. In fact, this is not surprising at all, because graphics card developers focused all their major efforts on the support of PCI Express bus, so that all newest graphics accelerators are designed to support this particular interface. So, AGP graphics cards are little by little leaving the market. Therefore, the chipsets for AMD Athlon 64 processors supporting PCI Express bus appear the most acute products nowadays.

Actually, the existing Socket 939 mainboards supporting PCI Express bus are currently based on one of the three chipsets. First of all, these are the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset series, which we have already discussed in great detail in our mainboard reviews.

Also, PCI Express solution for AMD Athlon 64 processors is available from ATI. However, this solution called RADEON XPRESS 200 is not that widely spread yet and is mostly used by OEM and system integrators. The retail mainboards based on this chipset will hardly an attractive purchase for hardware enthusiasts, because they do not offer any options for efficient CPU overclocking.

The third chipset for Athlon 64 processors with PCI Express bus support was developed by VIA and is called K8T890. Although this chipset was announced together with NVIDIA nForce4 about half a year ago, the mainboards based on it are just beginning to appear in retail. Of course, we couldn’t miss this important event in the hardware world and decided to compare the performance of these mainboards with the already recognized sales hits, nForce4 based solutions.

So, today we are going to take a really close look at one of the first retail mainboards based on the VIA K8T890 chipset – ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. Moreover, basing on the features of this solution we will also try to evaluate the potential and market prospective of the VIA K8T890 chipset against the background of pretty successful NVIDIA nForce4 solution.

VIA K8T890 vs. NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra: Features Comparison

Speaking about the VIA K8T890 chipset, we have to admit that it doesn’t look that impressive against the background of the nForce4 solution. It is not only because of the less overwhelming features list, but also because of the chipset architecture itself. While NVIDIA nForce4  is a single-chip solution, VIA K8T890 is based on the classical dual-chip architecture. The VIA core logic set consists of the North and South Bridges connected with the company’s brand-name V-Link bus with 1066MB/s data transfer rate.

However, despite this high data transfer rate, the use of additional connecting components between the two chipset components leads inevitably to tangible delays when the system CPU addresses peripheral controllers implemented in the chipset South Bridge.

The North Bridge of the VIA K8T890 chipset is responsible for HyperTransport and PCI Express bus support. HyperTransport bus serves to connect the chipset with the processor and can work at up to 1GHz frequency. It means that VIA K8T890 is compatible with any contemporary Athlon 64 processors. To be fair we have to say that unlike NVIDIA, VIA has never had any problems with the implementation of the HyperTransport bus. As you remember, the first NVIDIA nForce4 chipset revisions didn’t support 1GHz HyperTransport bus. This was actually one of the reasons why nForce4 4x chipset appeared. This solution supported HyperTransport with the working frequency limited to only 800MHz. VIA K8T890, on the contrary, works with 1GHz HyperTransport bus without any problems, and even allows increasing the frequency of this bus over the nominal value.

As for the PCI Express bus, the features of K8T890 are pretty standard here: the chipset supports 20 PCI Express lanes and up to 5 connected devices. In other words, since the graphics card requires PCI Express x16 interface, VIA K8T890 supports up to 4 PCI Express x1 devices.

Just like NVIDIA nForce4, VIA K8T890 theoretically allows combining PCI Express lanes pretty flexibly so that there could be PCI Express x2 and x4 interfaces. Moreover, the graphics PCI Express x16 bus can be “split” into to PCI Express x8 busses in order to support SLI-like configurations. However, right now NVIDIA drivers do not allow building SLI systems on competitor chipsets that is why you will not find any VIA K8T890 based mainboards with two graphics slots in the market today. However, configurations like that might still be very helpful if you need to install a few graphics cards in your system to ensure multi-display support. So, I wouldn’t completely deny that one day we may see VIA K8T890 based mainboards with a pair of PCI Express x8 slots for graphics accelerators. I will tell you even more: mainboards like that have already been designed and do exists in the form of engineering samples.

The today’s mainboards based on the VIA K8T890 North Bridge use VIA VT8237R South Bridge. This chip should be pretty familiar to you because they used it with the previous generation AGP 8x chipsets for Athlon 64 processors. Since this South Bridge is quite old already, its functionality is not as broad as you wish it could be. That is why it is not at all surprising that VIA VT8237R is much scarcer than NVIDIA nForce4 in terms of various interfaces support.

Take for instance the Serial ATA controller built into the VT8237R. It supports only two Serial ATA-150 ports, while the nForce4 supports four of them. Moreover, VIA chipset doesn’t support NCQ and 3Gbit/s data transfer rate, while nForce4 boasts all these features. Then, even though the VIA chipset allows building RAID 0 or 1 arrays from Serial ATA hard disk drives, the NVIDIA chipset also supports RAID 0+1 and Parallel ATA HDDs.

A similar comparison can be carried out for the chipsets network controllers. NVIDIA nForce4 features Gigabit network controller with ActiveArmor hardware security system. VIA’s chipset offers only a primitive 10/100Mbit network controller.

As far as the USB 2.0 support is concerned, the features comparison here will also be not in VIA’s favor: VIA chipset supports only eight USB 2.0 ports, while NVIDIA nForce4 – ten.

As for the integrated sound solution, VIA K8T890 with its 8-channel AC’97 sound doesn’t yield to NVIDIA nForce4.

Summing up everything we have just mentioned above, I would like to offer you the following table listing all the major features of both chipsets:

* May appear in the future

However, despite not very long features list of the VIA K8T890 chipset, it will still find its market. The thing is that the mainboard makers get this chipset at a considerably lower price than they would pay for the NVIDIA nForce4.

Overclockers may also find VIA K8T890 solution very attractive, because it allows independent clocking of the PCI and PCI Express busses, which is an important advantage. This way, Athlon 64 processors can theoretically overclock much easier on the VIA K8T890 based mainboards. Well, we will not make any final conclusions yet. Now we suggest getting started with the actual VIA K8T890 based mainboard review.

Specification

The first mainboard based on VIA K8T890, which we managed to get in our testlab was ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. ASUS decided to use NVIDIA chipset for its expensive mainboards with SLI support, and for the mainstream solutions they turned to VIA K8T890 plus a few extra controllers. Here is what they managed to design:

The formal specification of this board looks as follows:

If we take a closer look at the mainboard we will see that the PCB has special spots reserved for the additional Serial ATA RAID controller for four ports and for one more PCI Express x1 slot. However, there are no corresponding components in these spots. ASUS doesn’t have any other mainboards in their current product range, which would use the same PCB. So, they apparently left these spots on the PCB for some future products, or on the contrary, ASUS engineers had to remove the components from these spots to ensure stable and reliable functioning of the board.

Accessories

The box with ASUS A8V-E Deluxe also contains the following:

• A CD disk with the standard set of drivers and utilities and a CD disk with the WinDVD Suite;
• Two Serial ATA cables and one power cable for two serial ATA HDDs;
• One black 80-pin Parallel ATA cable and a black FDD cable;
• A bracket for the case rear panel with two High-Speed USB ports and a Game port;
• A bracket for the case rear panel with one FireWire port;
• A bracket for the case rear panel with one Serial port;
• I/O shield for the case rear panel;
• An Antenna for the Wi-Fi controller;
• User’s guide.

As we see, ASUS A8V-E Deluxe boasts a pretty rich bundle. We were especially happy to see a variety of brackets, which allow using most ports laid out on the mainboard PCB.

Closer Look

Of course, if we only use the features of the VIA K8T890 chipset, the mainboard will turn out a budget solution. Therefore, ASUS engineers who wanted to make a good mainstream product had to use a few additional onboard controllers (not counting in the PHY-chips): a Gigabit network controller, a wireless network controller and an IEEE1394 controller. This way, ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is more than just a VIA K8T890 based solution: its features go a way beyond the chipset specifications.

As for the major functions, however, they are all brought by the chipset. This mainboard supports Socket 939 processors with HyperTransport bus working at 1GHz frequency and features four DDR DIMM slots. The DIMM slots assigned to different memory channels are placed separately and are of different color. So, if you would like to take full advantage of the Athlon 64 memory controller, you should use it in the dual-channel mode and hence install memory modules in pairs into slots of corresponding color.

Despite huge potential of Athlon 64 in terms of the size of supported memory, ASUS A8V-E Deluxe allows installing not more than 4GB of DDR SDRAM. Moreover, it will work only in DDR333 mode if you install the maximum supported amount of memory, and the system OS will still have somewhat less than the installed 4GB at its disposal because of the chipset architectural peculiarities. In case only two DIMM slots are occupied, this limitation is not valid any more and the memory can work in DDR400 mode.

For the graphics card and other add-on cards there is one PCI Express x16 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and three 32bit/33MHz PCI slots.

The Serial ATA RAID controller, integrated sound and USB ports of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe are all provided by the VIA K8T890 chipset. Let’s discuss all these functions in a little bit greater detail.

Two Serial ATA ports available on the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard support pretty traditional features set for the year 2003-2004. They support regular Serial ATA-150 hard drives. Note that NCQ support and higher data transfer rates typical of the Serial ATA II specification are not implemented on the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. The hard disk drives connected to the Serial ATA ports can be united into RAID 0 or 1 arrays and then configured with the help of VIA’s own VIA RAID Tool utility:

Parallel ATA HDDs cannot be used to form RAID arrays.

Of course, we are very much interested in the performance of the Serial ATA RAID controller integrated into the VIA VT8237R chipset South Bridge. We decided to measure it in order to make our opinion about the controller efficiency. For this purpose we created a RAID 0 array of Western Digital Raptor WD360GD hard disk drives and connected it to the controller tested. All measurements were taken with the HDD Test Suite from FutureMark PCMark04 package. For a more illustrative comparison the table below also contains the performance results of the Serial ATA RAID controller implemented in the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset:

As the numbers show, Serial ATA interface of the nForce4 is much faster than that of the VIA K8T890 solution. In fact this is not a surprise for us, keeping in mind the architectural differences between the chipsets we consider. The Serial ATA controller in the NVIDIA chipset features “dual-channel” architecture. Moreover, it is located much “closer” to the CPU, because there are no busses connecting the chipset bridges. The Serial ATA performance of the VIA K8T890 chipset is limited by a number of factors, including the major one: the V-Link bus on the way from the Serial ATA controller in the chipset South Bridge to the system CPU.

The integrated sound of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe is implemented via the Realtek AC97 codec – ALC850. This eight-channel sound codec is one of the most popular solutions today and is almost always used on the mainboards based around NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset. This codec complies with the AC97 2.3 specification and supports Universal Audio Jack technology (it implies that the audio output ports can be reassigned according to the devices connected to them). I should point out here that the mainboard rear panel carries six audio-jacks, an optical and a coaxial SPDIF output ports.

Despite the fact that NVIDIA based Socket 939 mainboards are also equipped with the Realtek ALC850 sound codec, the sound implementation on the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is very much different from the integrated sound like that on nForce4 based mainboards, which we have already discussed in great detail in our previous articles. The thing is that all nForce4 based products are bundled with NVIDIA’s own drivers. In this case the ALC850 codec goes with Realtek’s own driver software.

This fact alongside with the different implementation of the AC97 tract on the chipset level do affect the sound quality a lot. During the practical testing we carried out, the sound system of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard scored as follows:

General performance: Good

This way, even though the codec is the same as the one used on NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra based mainboards, the sound provided by ASUS A8V-E Deluxe appears a way better. Actually, this is one of the major advantages of VIA K8T890 compared with the rival from NVIDIA.

All eight USB 2.0 ports supported by the VIA K8T890 are laid out on ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. Four ports are available on the mainboard rear panel, another four ports are represented by the onboard pin-connectors. The mainboard is supplied with a special rear panel bracket with two additional High Speed USB 2.0 ports. So one of the USB pin-connectors remains free and can be used for the USB ports of your case.

One of the greatest disadvantages of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is very unstable functioning of the USB ports in USB 2.0 mode. As we found out later, this issue occurs only with this particular mainboard. Other mainboards based on VIA K8T890 chipset have pretty functional USB 2.0 ports. With ASUS A8V-E Deluxe we failed to use the available USB 2.0 ports properly: the mainboard refused to recognize them for some reason. All regular USB devices work just fine on this board, however.

Therefore, we had to use another mainboard based on the VIA K8T890 chipset in order to evaluate the performance of the USB 2.0 controller implemented in the chipset. We took Albatron K8X890 Pro (the review of this mainboard is coming out soon). With the help of AIDA32 utility we measured the USB bus bandwidth and CPU utilization, when the USB bus is used to address USB 2.0 Maxtor OneTouch 250GB HDD. For a better comparison we measured the same performance in the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra based platform:

As we see, USB 2.0 bus of the VIA K8T890 is much slower than that of nForce4, especially when the data is transferred from the chipset to an external device. So, it looks like we are not going to say anything highly positive about the VIA K8T890 chipset.

Now let’s say a few words about the functions that are implemented on our ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard via additional onboard controllers. First of all we should pay due attention to network interface. No wonder that ASUS engineers gave up the obsolete Fast Ethernet controller integrated into the VIA VT8237R South Bridge. They integrated a Marvell Yukon 88E8053 chip instead. You should already be familiar with this solution, because you can come across it on many i925/i915 based mainboards. The major peculiarity of this controller is its connection to the PCI Express x1 bus, which allows it to ensure practical data transfer rates of up to 1Gbit/s.

Let us compare the performance of this controller against that of the integrated network controller of the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra. We used NTttcp utility from Microsoft Windows NT DDK to measure the controller performance. NVIDIA Firewall 2.0 was disabled throughout the test session:

As we see, Marvell Yukon chip provides better bandwidth than nForce4 Ultra. However, it loads the CPU heavier, especially if we compare it with what we see by nForce4 with the activated hardware ActiveArmor technology.

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe also supports wireless 802.11g standard with up to 54Mbit/s bus bandwidth. For this purpose they used a Marvell 88W8310 controller. The accompanying software allows using this controller in Ad Hoc mode as well as Infrastructure mode. Moreover, the device can also function as a software access point allowing up to 31 client connections.

In conclusion to our features discussion I would like to say that ASUS A8V-E Deluxe owes its two IEEE1394a ports with 400Mbit/s bandwidth to the TI TSB43AB22A controller. One of the ports is laid out on the mainboard rear panel, another one is represented as an onboard pin-connector. There is a special bracket for the case rear panel that is included into the list of accompanying accessories.

PCB Design

The design of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe PCB didn’t promise to be very complex because the board was not equipped with too many additional controllers. However, since ASUS engineers decided to reserve a few spots for the additional Serial ATA controller and an extra PCI Express x1 slot, the mainboard turned out overloaded with electronic components in the end. And we do know that in this case it is really difficult to suggest a successful design solution. Unfortunately, this is true for the mainboard reviewed today: ASUS A8V-E Deluxe has a lot of drawbacks as far as the components placement is concerned.

In fact, there are very few components that can boast very convenient and smart locations on the PCB. These are the FDD and Parallel ATA HDD connectors, as well as the ATX power supply connector, which are all situated in front of the DIMM slots. All other connectors are placed in far not the best way I should say.

I would like to begin with the additional 12V power connector that is located at the back edge of the PCB, right behind the CPU, so that the cable going from it will inevitable hinder the processor cooling. The same inconvenient location was assigned to the COM port. It is situated at the very front edge of the PCB, however, it should be connected to the rear panel bracket with a special cable, which will have to go right across the entire case this way.

But the most questionable solution is actually the great number of various connectors and jumpers right next to the PCI Express x16 slot. They placed Serial ATA ports right in front of the slot, so that the HDD cables may become a serious obstacle in case large graphics cards are installed. The additional USB slots pin-connectors to the left of the PCI Express x16 slot will be hard to use if the installed graphics card is equipped with a massive cooling system. And in conclusion I would like to draw your attention to the Clear CMOS jumper, which finds itself almost under the left end of the notorious PCI Express x16 slot, so that you will only be able to use it if the graphics card is completely removed from the system.

However, things are not hopeless and ASUS A8V-E Deluxe does boast a few indisputable design advantages as well. The major one is the PCI Express x16 slot, which has been moved away from the CPU and memory slots, and a PCI Express x1 slot right next to it. This clears off quite a lot of room around the CPU, so that you can easily install any type of massive cooling system and make sure that the proper airflow cols the processor. Secondly, the installed graphics card will never prevent you from putting in or taking out the memory modules. And thirdly, the installed graphics card with massive cooling system onboard will not block the three PCI slots of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. It means that even if you are using the latest graphics accelerator all three PCI slots will still be available to you. You will only sacrifice the not yet very popular PCI Express x1 slot in this case.

Another peculiarity of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe design is the fact that DIMM slots assigned to the same memory channel are placed at a distance from one another on the mainboard PCB. This is a very rare occasion when DIMM slots are placed this way on a Socket 939 mainboard, however, it is a highly advantageous solution. When you install a pair of modules into this system there is a lot of room between them, which ensures excellent cooling of the DDR SDRAM.

For the power supply needs ASUS used a new 24-pin connector. However, there is no need to panic: these connectors are compatible with the old 20-pin plugs, so if you still have an older PSU, there is no need to worry and rush to the store.

The voltage regulator of the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe is designed as a three-channel solution. MOSFETs of the power circuitry are cooled with an aluminum heatsink. Even due to this fairly simple cooling solution, MOSFETs temperature remains pretty low: our measurements indicated 40-45^oC in different work modes. As for the capacitors, ASUS used Nippon Chemi-Con components. The same high-quality capacitors were used on ASUS P4P800 and P4C800 mainboard series. That is why there is no cause for concern here.

According to our practical tests the VIA K8T890 chipset North Bridge heats up pretty tangibly. That is why ASUS used an active cooler for it. Although I wouldn’t call the cooler design successful.

The thing is that the heatsink surface area is quite small, however, ASUS used a high-speed fan with the rotation speed up to 8,000rpm. The fan rotation speed is permanent, so the working mainboard produces very noticeable unpleasant noise. Moreover, I would also question the efficiency of this fan because the North Bridge temperature remained within 50-60^oC range throughout the entire test session.

The rear panel of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard looks somewhat unusual. It carried: two PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, 6-pin IEEE1394 connector, RJ45 network connector with LED indicators, six audio jacks, an optical and coaxial SPDIF port, a connector for WiFi antenna and a LED indicating the WiFi connection activity. Note that there are no serial ports, however, one COM port is laid out on the mainboard as a pin-connector and there is a special bracket with the COM port enclosed into the package.

BIOS and Overclocking

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard was tested with the latest BIOS available at the time of the test session: version 1004.

The BIOS of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is based on “ASUS” revision” of Award-Phoenix microcode. Therefore, the BIOS Setup of this mainboard is very similar to BIOS Setup of other current ASUS products, but at the same time is dramatically different from the BIOS Setup of competitor mainboards.

That is why, it is not at all surprising that the BIOS Setup of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe boasts a lot of interesting features, such as numerous options for automatic overclocking in the first place. At the same time, however, we have to state that it is not free from quite a few frustrating bugs, which cause problems during mainboard operation. We have already mentioned one of them, the inability of USB ports to work correctly in USB 2.0 mode. The other issues we need to point out will be discussed in this review section.

However, let’s stick to our traditional plan and begin with the manual options an overclocker gets with the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. Among them are:

• The frequency of the clock generator can be adjusted from 200 to 400MHz with 1MHz increment.
• The frequency of the PCI Express bus can be independently adjusted from 100 to 200MHz with 1MHz increment;
• The PCI bus frequency can be manually set to 33, 37.5 or 40MHz;
• The CPU frequency multiplier can be reduced below the nominal value; the minimal value is 4x;
• The parameters responsible for the working frequency and width of the HyperTransport bus can also be adjusted. The frequency of this bus is set with a multiplier (to the clock generator frequency), which can be set to 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. The width of the bus can be set to 8 or 16 bits in any direction;
• The CPU voltage can be varied from 0.825V to 1.5625V with 0.0125V increment. There’s another parameter in the BIOS Setup that allows increasing the voltage by 0.1V or 0.2V;
• The memory voltage can be selected manually: from 2.6 to 3.0V with 0.05V increment;
• The chipset voltage can be increased from the default 1.5V to 1.6V.

As we see, this is a pretty impressive list of overclocking-friendly features. We were especially happy to see that the memory voltage can be increased a lot (up to 3.0V). However, at the same time you will not be able to significantly raise the CPU Vcore: the maximum you can get on the CPU with all possible means is 1.76V. In fact, this should be more than enough in most cases anyway.

I would like to stress that it is not very convenient to perform overclocking on ASUS A8V-E Deluxe via BIOS Setup options. First of all, all the options are spread all over the sections of the BIOS. Second, the CPU core voltage is adjusted in a not very clear way. The thing is that the CPU Vcore Offset option cannot be disabled and should either be set at +100mV or +200mV. Therefore, the voltage set in the Hammer Vid control section should be 100 or 200mV lower than desired. And the most unpleasant thing here is the setting of the nominal CPU Vcore in the Hammer Vid control section by selecting the StartUp value: in reality the CPU will receive 0.1 or 0.2V higher voltage anyway.

Besides the above listed options for manual overclocking, the BIOS Setup of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe also offers two options for automatic overclocking. The first one is activated by selecting the AI Overclock profile, and allows raising the clock generator frequency by 3, 5, 8 or 10%.

The second technology called AI NOS (Non Delay Overclocking System) is a little bit more intelligent. It allows increasing the clock generator frequency by 3, 5, 8 or 10% only when necessary, i.e. when the CPU workload is really high. This way, AI NOS appears similar to MSI’s Dynamic Overclocking technology.

As for the memory controller settings, the situation here is really hopeless. First of all I have to point out that there are very few parameters the mainboard allows adjusting at all.

Among them are just the frequency and Tcl, Trcd, Tras and Trp timings. Unfortunately, a very important parameter, 1T/2T Memory Timings cannot be adjusted on ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. In fact, we have already seen mainboards that do not allow adjusting this very parameter, too, and it was not that crucial. But not in case of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. The thing is that this mainboard always sets 1T/2T Memory Timings to 2T, which reduces the mainboard performance a way below what it should be.

This is not the only problem with the memory configuration. When we set Trcd and Trp parameters in the BIOS Setup to Auto, the board raises the values above those written in the memory modules SPD, which also doesn’t tell well on the performance.

It looks like ASUS engineers tried to increase the reliability of their A8V-E Deluxe mainboard by raising the memory controller latencies. However, they failed to actually succeed. The testing showed that the board doesn’t run stably enough with memory modules designed to support low timings. For example, when we installed Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO or Corsair TWINX1024-3200XL memory modules based on popular Samsung TCCD chips into our ASUS A8V-E Deluxe based platform, it lost its stability. It resulted into complete freezing during the memory test run by S&M utility and into constant failing to go through the Memory Benchmark from the Futuremark PCMark04 test set. To tell the truth, we don’t know how to overcome these issues. At least, we failed to regain any stability by changing the memory timings in the BIOS or raising Vmem and Vchipset. Note that with the memory working at 400MHz and supporting less aggressive timings, the problem disappeared and the platform worked well.

Among the overclocking friendly options I should probably also mention the PEG Link Mode of the BIOS Setup. This parameter allows overclocking PCI Express x16 graphics cards on ATI chips. However, we would advise you to disable this option, because you will get much better results if you overclock the graphics card individually, and do not rely on the mainboard options here.

Well, now that we introduced to you all options for CPU overclocking available on our ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard, it is high time we got down to some practical experiments. Our test session will allow us to find the maximum clock generator frequency when the platform remains stable. For our tests we used AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (working at the nominal 2.4GHz) with the clock multiplier preliminarily reduced to 8x. In order to eliminate the limitations imposed by the memory potential, we reduced the memory working frequency down to the guaranteed supported values.

First of all I would like to stress the fact that the HyperTransport multiplier doesn’t in any way affect the overclocking results on ASUS A8V-E Deluxe. In other words, even if you set this multiplier to the maximum supported value of 5X, the mainboard will still work at the top clock generator frequency without any problems: ASUS A8V-E Deluxe owes this ability to the VIA K8T890 chipset architecture. In fact, we have already got used to reducing the HyperTransport bus multiplier, because of the constant problems with high working frequencies of this bus on NVIDIA nForce4 chipset. Actually, this is the case only for NVIDIA chipsets. So, we have every right to state that VIA K8T890 chipset works much better and more correct with the HyperTransport than NVIDIA nForce4 chipset family.

So, it is a way easier to overclock AMD Athlon 64 processors on VIA K8T890- based mainboards. But unfortunately, I wouldn’t call ASUS A8V-E Deluxe an overclocker’s choice. Even though it boasts a lot of overclocking friendly options and parameters, our experiments showed that it is not as efficient as it might seem at first sight. The maximum clock generator frequency when ASUS A8V-E Deluxe retains its stability is only 266MHz. It is simply impossible to increase the frequency any further: the mainboard wouldn’t start if the frequency is set at a higher value. No other tricks helped us to get beyond the notorious 266MHz.

So, the summary of our overclocking results will look as follows:

In other words, the overclocking potential of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is lower than that of most NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra/SLI based solutions. Although in most cases it should still be enough for normal overclocking experience without reducing the CPU clock frequency multiplier.

Besides the automatic and dynamic overclocking technologies, ASUS A8V-E Deluxe also supports Cool’n’Quiet technology reducing the processor frequency in case of low utilization. The remarkable thing about it is the fact that this technology can work together with the AI NOS. In other words, if the CPU is not loaded that heavily, its frequency and core voltage will be reduced, however, then the CPU gets loaded in full, it gets automatically overclocked beyond the nominal speed. Note that Cool’n’Quiet works only if the CPU clock multiplier is set to default.

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe boasts one more interesting feature: it can control the processor fan speed judging by the processor temperature. You can set the optimal temperature values in the mainboard BIOS Setup and the fan rotation speed will be automatically adjusted accordingly.

Software

Unfortunately, VIA doesn’t develop various utilities for their chipsets like NVIDIA. In fact, the only VIA”s own utility available for ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard is VIA RAID Tool. That is why the software bundle included with the mainboard contains mostly ASUS’ own utilities.

Among them are:

• ASUS Probe.
  

  

  This program is intended to provide hardware monitoring. And it copes with this task just perfect! Among all the hardware monitoring utilities we have come across so far, ASUS Probe is definitely the best. It can not only display the current temperatures, voltages and rotation speeds of the cooling fans, but can also provide information about the system hardware and record a log-file.

• ASUS Update
  

  

  This utility serves to update the mainboard BIOS from Windows. It can grab new BIOS versions from files, from ASUS web-site online.

• ASUS Cool’n’Quiet
  

  

  The developers intended this program to show the current processor working frequency and core voltage, so that the user could watch AI NOS and Cool’n’Quiet at work. However, you will not be able to actually use this tool, because it doesn’t display correct values all the time.

Besides the above listed utilities, ASUS A8V-E Deluxe also comes with a tool replacing the start-up screen image displayed during POST procedure, and with a tool for voice messages editing in the diagnostic system of this mainboard.

Testbed and Methods

In conclusion to our ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard review we would like to run our traditional set of benchmarks to show you the performance of this solution against that of other mainboards we have already reviewed. We will compared ASUS A8V-E Deluxe with the results showed by solutions based on NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra and SLI chipsets.

Here is the configuration of our test platform:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz, 512KB L2);

• Mainboards:
• ASUS A8V-E Deluxe (VIA K8T890)
• Chaintech VNF4 Ultra VE  (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• ECS KN1 Extreme (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• MSI K8N Diamond (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI).
• Memory: 1024MB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO, 2 x 512MB, 2-2-2-10).
• Graphics cards:
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (PCI Express x16, 500MHz/500MHz).
• HDD: Western Digital Raptor WD740GD (SATA150).

All tests were run in Windows XP SP2 operating system.

Performance

The results are actually quite natural. ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard lost to its competitors on NVIDIA nForce4 based chipsets in all benchmarks. In fact, we didn’t expect a different outcome, because this board uses 2T Memory Timing setting, which cannot be changed.

To be fair, we should mention that the low performance of ASUS A8V-E Deluxe in our test session doesn’t mean that the VIA K8T890 chipset is a bad solution. These results are first of all illustrating that ASUS engineers could have done a better job on their ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard.

Conclusion

We have to admit that ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard based on the new PCI Express chipset from VIA, K8T890, left a pretty disappointing impression. The features offered by the VIA K8T890 appeared somewhat weaker than those provided by the competing NVIDIA nForce4 series, and moreover, the mainboard from ASUS turned out not a real success.

VIA K8T890 chipset is definitely late for the market. The first actual mainboards based on it are coming out only now, but the features this chipset offers will hardly surprise anybody. The major drawbacks of this chipset are obsolete integrated Serial ATA RAID controller supporting only two ports and featuring no NCQ, and Fast Ethernet interface, which looks very outdated against the competitors’ Gigabit Ethernet solutions. However, despite these drawbacks, VIA K8T890 will find its place in inexpensive systems, because it does support Socket 939 CPUs and PCI Express interface. Moreover, its overclocking friendly options also look pretty good on paper: this solution can clock PCI and PCI Express busses asynchronously, and is much more stable than nForce4 at high HyperTransport frequencies.

This way, VIA K8T890 can still have a piece of the pie. If the mainboard makers manage to design stable, reliable and functional solutions based on it, the chipset may even win the hearts of some dedicated hardware enthusiasts.

Today we also introduced to you one of the attempts to design a mainboard like that. However, unfortunately, this attempt didn’t turn out a success. ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard based on VIA K8T890 chipset appeared a pretty raw product with quite a few unpleasant implementation flaws. In the nearest future we are going to look at other mainboards on the same chipset, so maybe our impression will improve with the time.

Anyway, the overall verdict about ASUS A8V-E Deluxe is not very promising. Even if you use this mainboard in the nominal default mode, you can still face some problems. Hopefully, many of these problems will be eliminated in the future versions of the mainboard BIOS, although the fourth version still had them as we have just seen.

Highs:

• Integrated WiFi controller;
• IEEE1394 support;
• Rich overclocking friendly options in the BIOS;
• Supports dynamic overclocking and Cool’n’Quiet, allows controlling the processor fan rotation speed depending on the CPU temperature.

Lows:

• Unstable with certain memory modules;
• Doesn’t support USB 2.0 devices;
• Doesn’t start at clock generator frequencies beyond 266MHz;
• Not very high performance;
• Scarce memory controller settings;
• Inconvenient PCB design.