CrossFire Support and Conclusions

CrossFire Support

Though I didn’t show any specific CrossFire benchmarks in this review, you can be sure that I completely tested the Asus A8R-MVP in CrossFire mode with our X850 XT CrossFire Edition card and another X850 XT.  If you want a full run down of the performance of the currently available X850 XT CrossFire setup, check out my full review on that product from back in September. 

The A8R-MVP offered the same performance levels and ran quite stable in our CrossFire tests.

Performance

The performance of the motherboard (not talking about CrossFire in this instance) was mostly right on par for what we expect from an AMD-platform motherboard.  Again, as if I haven’t said it enough, taking the memory controller from the chipset deparment makes life for chipset vendors much easier in terms of performance.

Asus A8R-MVP Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition Review - Motherboards 57

But there is still room for some problems, as the A8R-MVP did show in our USB performance test and the networking throughput tests.  The ULi M1575 south bridge has a much improved USB controller than the ATI SB450 does, that is for sure, but it still slower than that on the NF4 series of chipsets.  The networking issue was really a choice made by Asus for using a PCI-based Ethernet connection instead of a PCI Express solution.  Not many users will be hogging up more than the 600 Mb/s that the A8R-MVP provides, but if you do a lot of PC to PC transfers over a network you should take note of those results. 

Features and Extras

Even though this is a low cost motherboard, the features that Asus offers on the A8R-MVP are fairly robust.  The M1575 south bridge offers SATA-II support with just about the RAID options a user needs, including the RAID 5 option that has become the hot sell in RAID these days.  USB 2.0 and Firewire support are all there, and of course the single network controller we mentioned above.  The on-board audio isn’t anything to brag about really, but might suffice for very casual gamers or any basic home users.  Gamers that are serious though should really upgrade to another option. 

The BIOS on the A8R-MVP does not allow the same level of overclocking that the RDX200 offers, but should still be enough for most overclockers and tweakers.  For a mainstream board the A8R-MVP is competive here.  In the box we get only really the basics here with a couple of SATA and IDE cables and a USB/Firewire header along with the drivers and manual.

Pricing

The A8R-MVP isn’t available at any online stores yet that I could see and so retail pricing is up in the air.  The best guess that I have based on Asus’ estimates is that you should be able to find the board for about $125, much lower than the $200 that the DFI RDX200 is going for.  If this is how things turn out, I can’t see anyone paying $75 more for a board that uses the SB450 south bridge and doesn’t offer SATA-II though the RDX200 does have some interesting features of its own. 

I’ll update this conclusion page once I get more solid pricing information. 

Final Thoughts

The Asus A8R-MVP is among the first ATI CrossFire motherboards to hit the market.  With solid performance, features and a low cost this board should definitely be on your list if CrossFire peaks your interest.  

Our forums are a great place to find more information, user feedback and helpful assistance for any motherboards, but especially the Asus boards in our Asus motherboard forum

Also, if you haven’t tried our Product Specs database out yet, I suggest you do so, as it allows you to make some good, yet simple comparisons with the click of a mouse.

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the Asus A8R-MVP, and anything else you may want to buy!

« PreviousNext »