X-bit labs

Started by: Randy | Date 03/06/06

Comments: 16 | Last Comment:  09/30/07

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1. Even though this review is months late... The A8R-MVP has by now proven to be a real POS. As noted in this and other reviews - if you read between the HYPE and sugar coating in most A8R-MVP reviews - the Asus mobo has basic voltage and instability issues that no mobo should have. You can't even run high-end brand name memory on this POS in 1T mode.

The A8R-MVP mobo has a long list of problems that can be observed at the Asus user's forum and any other hardware forum, including vcore voltage instability. The icing on the cake however is that Asus has done nothing to fix the long list of problems after they advertised the A8R-MVP to be intended for "serious overclockers". read their false advertising for yourself.

Evidently "serious overclockers" at Asus must run their CPU at the default voltage because you can NOT under any circumstances increase the vcore voltage more than .1V above default, which is insane. DFI, Sapphire, etc. don't have vcore voltage or memory issues... The 2T memory and limited vcore voltages are crutches for a bad mobo design from what has been discovered on the A8R-MVP and now the A8R32 which has similar problems. The other ATI chipset mobos do not show the problems that Asus mobos show.

Asus has fraudulently marketed the A8R-MVP and the just released A8R32 has already been confirmed to have HTT, voltage, BIOS issues so you can see Asus has not got their act together. If ya do your homework you'll see
Asus has big problems with numerous AMD and Intel CPU based mobos so it would be wise to skip Asus for any new mobo purchases until they hire some competent engineers. The POS they have been hyping is anything but stable or reliable.

Randy,

I'm with you in saying that Asus is pure rubbish. Somehow, someway, they got a reputation for being top quality. I have no idea how, because they suck bad. I have had way too many problems with Asus motherboards, and have stopped buying them. At one time I had good luck with Aopen, but they suck now too.

I try to stick with American stuff now, and for me it's been worth the expense. Intel and Supermicro are expensive, but they are excellent motherboards too. I hate to admit it, because I know it's wrong, but I've taken a liking to Epox too. I fight it, but they are easy to work with, have great support and have been very reliable for me. I know I'm whistling past the graveyard saying that.

I wish I knew why people think Asus is good. It's contemptible junk.

2. At one time probably 5 years ago Asus was at the top of the Asian mobo makers for quality mobo designs. Since then they have been on a downhill spiral as they have tried to be the big dog in all areas of electronics. Just looking at the list of consumer junk they sell is staggering. The result is shoddy products, zero customer support, and a real manipulation of the media to get rave reviews of these shoddy products.

Asus' mentality is to rush stuff out the door to be the first so that the sheep will buy the not ready for prime time products. To get certain hardware sites to shill for them, Asus gives them special hand picked mobos like they use to do the THG. And in some cases they even give them a special BIOS that they refuse to provide to purchasers of the product. Then the hardware reviewers shill for Asus so they get the next mobo -- the A8R32 in this case -- before most other sites so they can SHILL some more for Asus. Asus and many hardware reviewers IMO have become unscrupulous.

As noted the A8R32 has already been documented to have voltage, memory and BIOS issues similar to the A8R-MVP so you know Asus hasn't got their act together and they are still shipping crap. It took them four different SLI designs before they could get an SLI32 design that was on par with every other mobo makers SLI16 mobos. What does that tell ya?

3. I don't think that I'm being overly biased when I say that your OC results are lower than average. You might be looking more at a CPU limitation or a combination CPU/mobo limit.

The reason that I say this is that I have a Winchester CPU that runs @ 2.65 stable and I've tested this motherboard to 315 HTT and it was stable there for me. I was also able to run 1:1 memory ratio up to 265 with HTT multiplier @ 4.

4. The Best motherboard I have ever used... No issues, or concerns...
Grade A +

A year later, did your ASUS motherboard still run well? The A8R-MVP?

5. It's good to see Xbit reviews does a complete testing of shoddy mobos like the A8R-MVP instead of glossing over the documented defects newbies and other reviewers fail to acknowledge.

6.
It is physically impossible to fit the standard Athlon 64 heatsink because the Radeon Express heatsink next to the CPU socket is too close. The clamping mechanism is to big to fit into the gap.

7. hi guys, could someone please help me with my raid problem? i just bought the Asus A8R-MVP and 2 maxtor 300gb hard drives. i follow the instructions to make a raid array but it just doesnt work. the raid array is created but after i restart the raid bios startup hangs for 3 minutes. when i re-enter the raid utility the raid array i created is gone. this is really fustrating, i read reviews this was a good board and now its pissing me off. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance.

8. What are the best agressive timings for A8R-MVP at 315mhz?

9. Piece of shit. I tried every fix there is. I cannot get RAID0working, it takes 5-7 minutes to even detect the drives, during config everything locks up.
Everything locks up at random moments, even in bios. Also sudden reboots. Bios forgets settings. Changes them at random. I turned every overclocking option off, but it still
oc's on it's own initiative. Then usually complaints the oc didn't work? What's this?

Also, a response from techsupport is not to be had.

Never Asus again.

Hi

Had the same problem trying to get RAID 0 to work.

Here's the solution:

Make sure your Maxtor drives have the latest firmware: They must be version 9001(I think :P the latest version) to do RAID.

Search google for Maxtor firmware download, because they are not available om Maxtors site.

This worked for me although I only found the firmware on a Russian site... don't have the link anymore.

Hope you get lucky, although that is nigh impossible with this totally useless mobo.

Sbear

10. Just put together a computer with one. Specs looked good :(

Ran for a whole two minutes before crashing during a windows install. Rebooted, and now i have the infamous "BIOS checksum fails..." cycle to deal with. Just out of the gate, and it's already going to be an RMA.

11. Onemore problem, after a while it stops renewing the ip address from the lan port, reinstalled drivers to no effect,so now i use the internet from my laptop. Asus suck big time.

try turning off "adaptive interrupt" or something like that in network card options

12. Thing I did to get stable work:
-PCI latency timer -> 128
-PCI-Express Voltage -> 1,3V
-Sata Mode Selection -> AHCI (well... first I installed windows with PATA emulated mode, then newest SATA drivers from Asus page, restart, change in BIOS and GO!
I have enabled C&Q and q-fan.

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