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ASUS A8R-MVP Motherboard (Athlon X2/ Athlon 64/ Sempron, Socket 939, Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire, ATX, 4GB DDR, 1GHz Bus)

83

Very Good

  • Pros
  • Supports CrossFire
  • 3-year warranty
  • Cons
  • Only has 4 SATA ports
  • No optical audio output
Performance
PerformanceSuperior: 91
WorldBench 5 Overall Score: Performance word scores reflect comparisons of PCs in the same category (power or value) running the same operating system. See Your Guide to the Top 100 for more details.Very Good: 122
ACD Systems ACDSee 490
Adobe Photoshop 331
Adobe Premiere 337
Ahead Nero 182
Discreet 3ds Max DirectX 266
Discreet 3ds Max OpenGL 294
Microsoft Office XP 513
Windows Media Encoder 283
Mozilla 378
Multitasking 421
Musicmatch Jukebox 483
Roxio VideoWave 265
WinZip 283
Doom 3 1024 by 768, 32-bit101
Doom 3 1280 by 1024, 32-bit101
Doom 3 1024 by 768, 32-bit (with anti-aliasing)91
Doom 3 1280 by 1024, 32-bit (with anti-aliasing)82
Far Cry 1024 by 768, 32-bit122
Far Cry 1280 by 1024, 32-bit121
Far Cry 1024 by 768, 32-bit (with anti-aliasing)116
Far Cry 1280 by 1024, 32-bit (with anti-aliasing)101
FeaturesVery Good: 84
Chip SetATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chip set
RAM Sockets4
Maximum Installable RAM4 GB
Dual Graphics SupportCrossFire dual-graphics support (8X)
Storage connectorsFour SATA-300 ports, two SATA-150 ports, two PATA ports
RAID supportRAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 support
External SATA portsNo
Back Panel USB Ports4
Primary Network AdapterGigabit
Labor Warranty (years) Three
Parts Warranty (years) Three
Saturday Support Hours 9
Sunday Support Hours 9
Toll-Free Support No
DesignGood: 74

User Reviews for ASUS A8R-MVP Motherboard (Athlon X2/ Athlon 64/ Sempron, Socket 939, Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire, ATX, 4GB DDR, 1GHz Bus)

  • Reviewed by:

    Duration of ownership:

    Strengths: SLI, SATA II, FireWire and GB Ethernet.

    Weaknesses: Lack of support from ASUS...

    Overall Evaluation: If it's rebooting every five minutes, try turning off the "Cool and Quiet" in the bios. With it enabled, the CPU fan may not be spinning (check it visually), causing the CPU to overheat--and reboot.

  • Reviewed by: TechMage89

    Duration of ownership:

    Strengths: Great while it lasted...

    Weaknesses: Frequent bluescreens, memory won't run stably in 1T mode, overclocking destablizes the system much more rapidly than it should

    Overall Evaluation: One year is not an adequate lifespan for a motherboard, especially a $200 one. I never attempted extreme overclocking, but I now get random blue screens of death in windows and segfaults in linux. My memory is not at fault: it has been tested thoroughly and is good. The processor also shows no problems. But the frequent (and totally random, both in timing and in message) blue screens have led me to believe that there are problems in the chipset or hypertransport bus. My processor (a athlon64 X2 3800+) and memory are reported to be capable of a 20% overclock with few problems, but the computer wouldn't even start with a 13% overclock. A very poor quality motherboard.

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