Asus RD580 is A8R32-MVP - Passvie Crossfire

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:32 am

TomZ wrote:
Creative (maybe others) has tried to design pci-e soundcards, but there's too much noise on the pci-e bus.
How could that be? PCIe should have orders of magnitude less noise than PCI, at least in theory. Where did you find this out from?

Steve Erickson, vice president for Creative's audio products:

"As far as PCI Express (PCIe) is concerned, which is the next bus, what we found is that the performance of PCIe is truly bad for audio. We are seeing four times degradation on the bus for audio.

PCIe is designed for graphics and high data transfer, but audio sends very small packets and the overhead can be very big! Moving the data across PCIe is much, much higher than PCI. So what we have to do is go back to the drawing board and work on the transport part of the chip and re-design it to add more silicon to overcome some of the problems we had with PCIe. So for us to come up with a PCIe solution is going to take a while because we have to overcome the problems we're facing with that bus."

teuron · Post by **teuron** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:56 am

Here is a review article about the MB with 2 of those Asus x1600 silent vid cards:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29990

--t

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:52 am

jackylman wrote: Steve Erickson, vice president for Creative's audio products:

"As far as PCI Express (PCIe) is concerned, which is the next bus, what we found is that the performance of PCIe is truly bad for audio. We are seeing four times degradation on the bus for audio.

PCIe is designed for graphics and high data transfer, but audio sends very small packets and the overhead can be very big! Moving the data across PCIe is much, much higher than PCI. So what we have to do is go back to the drawing board and work on the transport part of the chip and re-design it to add more silicon to overcome some of the problems we had with PCIe. So for us to come up with a PCIe solution is going to take a while because we have to overcome the problems we're facing with that bus."

First, this has nothing to do with noise, right? He is just talking about data transfer performance.

Anyway, everything he says is pure BS anyway, so you can't really draw any conclusions from his statement. If this wasn't OT, I would elaborate, but I don't think anyone is interested.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:07 am

TomZ wrote:First, this has nothing to do with noise, right? He is just talking about data transfer performance.

I'm not sure. Maybe the guy is an idiot and doesn't know what he's talking about. To me, "signal degradation" would imply noise.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:07 am

TomZ wrote:First, this has nothing to do with noise, right? He is just talking about data transfer performance.

Anyway, everything he says is pure BS anyway, so you can't really draw any conclusions from his statement. If this wasn't OT, I would elaborate, but I don't think anyone is interested.

When someone claims, that other guy is talking pure bullshit, I would like to see the proof. Sorry, but in this matter vice president of Creative audios has more authority then you, even if he wasn't a technician/engineer. Without proof, your words are just an opinion to me. So please feel free to elaborate, either in this thread or in a new one.

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:25 am

Erssa wrote:I would like to see the proof.

Check out the comments by odlumb on this page: http://www.guru3d.com/viewcomment.php?threadid=1067. These were written in response to Erikson's original comments. What odlumb is saying is pretty much what I was thinking. But I would add the following.

PCIe uses high-bandwidth LVDS, which has controlled-impedance drivers, termination resistors, lower voltage swings, and fewer signals, which generates less electrical noise. Good for audio.

PCIe uses the same packet protocol encoding as PCI. Therefore, "overhead" would be the same between the PCI and PCIe, contrary to what Erickson is saying.

He says that they need to change the silicon because of "problems." But their silicon already integrates a PCI interface. You can tell this because their cards are basically single-chip solutions. If they switch to PCIe, this would require a silicon (ASIC) re-spin because the bus is fundamentally different, not just because of PCIe "problems."

Finally, I would add that if there is PCIe overhead/inefficiency, this wouldn't keep PCIe from being feasible for sound devices. Timing inefficiency shouldn't/couldn't keep a product from coming to market. PCIe works fine for video, which is much more demanding than audio.

Bottom line, the decision to not bring a PCIe product to market at this time is not due to PCIe "problems," but is due to other factors, e.g., market demand, internal R&D priorities, etc. It is a business decision; it is not the fault of PCIe.

I'm not saying that Erikson doesn't know what he's talking about or what the real issues are. I'm just saying he gave uninformed or incorrect answers out in response to the question that was asked about PCIe.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:23 pm

Sparkytfl wrote:Well the non-32 version was supposed to be a winner, but ended up having major defects. If you check out the asus forum you'll see a ton of people complaining and threatening class action lawsuits and stuff. I have horrible stuttering/skipping while playing dvds, mp3s, and the like, and I've tried several programs so it's not that. Hopefully this board will fix all that crap. Kind of pathetic that instead of addressing the issues with the current board, they make a new one.

Have you solved the problems with your (I presume RD480) ASUS motherboard

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:24 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:Any news about an abit mobo with this chipset? I hope for a better fan management on abit motherboard, Asus's qfan2 don't impress me much

Here:
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/9478

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:56 pm

Nice, thank you rpsgc

TooNice · Post by **TooNice** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 4:53 pm

Erssa wrote:Sorry, but in this matter vice president of Creative audios has more authority then you, even if he wasn't a technician/engineer. Without proof, your words are just an opinion to me. So please feel free to elaborate, either in this thread or in a new one.

I have to say, I am skeptical about those statements. Creative hasn't got the most spotless history when it comes to business practices.

I am fine with Creative sticking with PCI now, after all, I just spent a whole load of money into their top end offering (much as I am not keen in for their business practices, their product seem to fit my requirement more).

Well, I do think that PCI is on the way out. Not anytime soon, ISA didn't vanish overnight, and Creative only started making PCI sound card just before the Live! era in.. 1998? That's a few years after PCI has been around.

So yea, I'd say PCI-E is too much to ask for right now, but it'll come. That guy? He is just being polite ("we don't think releasing both PCI & PCIe now is going to make us money").

Sparkytfl · Post by **Sparkytfl** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:44 pm

Firetech wrote:
Sparkytfl wrote:Well the non-32 version was supposed to be a winner, but ended up having major defects. If you check out the asus forum you'll see a ton of people complaining and threatening class action lawsuits and stuff. I have horrible stuttering/skipping while playing dvds, mp3s, and the like, and I've tried several programs so it's not that. Hopefully this board will fix all that crap. Kind of pathetic that instead of addressing the issues with the current board, they make a new one.
Have you solved the problems with your (I presume RD480) ASUS motherboard

Well I just upgraded my soundcard from my soundblaster 16pci to an maudio pci recording card, and well the problems have just changed. The audio stuttering has stopped (looks like they didn't bother to work out compatability with the most popular soundcards ever), and now everything works perfectly for long periods of time, until it randomly completely freezes once or twice a night. I managed to get a blue screen and a memory dump which gave me an error code that only came up with results related to usb stuff which people on the asus forum have mentioned crashing that went away when disabling their usb. Wasn't even using anything usb besides my mouse. Of course i also changed video cards recently. The audio problem happened with both though. I'm not completely done troubleshooting yet.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:13 pm

Hmmm, doesn't sound too promising. I was thinking of getting an RD480 board (probably ABIT AT8) but these chipsets seem to be just as buggy as the NF4 boards were/are.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:32 pm

Firetech wrote:Hmmm, doesn't sound too promising. I was thinking of getting an RD480 board (probably ABIT AT8) but these chipsets seem to be just as buggy as the NF4 boards were/are.

I wouldn't condemn the chipset for something Asus has screwed up. Especially when the USB ports, and are controlled by Uli southbridge, it would be funny to pass the blame on Atis nb chipset. Asus rushes things to be the first on market and this is what you get.

I have heard too about a bug with this mobo that causes it to crash with iPods or something. You can probably google it around with "Ipod USB Asus MVP" if you wanted.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:02 pm

Erssa wrote:I wouldn't condemn the chipset for something Asus has screwed up. Especially when the USB ports, and are controlled by Uli southbridge, it would be funny to pass the blame on Atis nb chipset. Asus rushes things to be the first on market and this is what you get.

I have heard too about a bug with this mobo that causes it to crash with iPods or something. You can probably google it around with "Ipod USB Asus MVP" if you wanted.

Thanks Erssa, I wasn't condeming the ATI chipset but the combination of ATI & ULI does seem to have issues. That combination is apparently better than with the previous SB450 Southbridge but again it could all be a BIOS related problem. It's just difficult to judge as the ASUS is the main board out there, although ABIT AT8 users are having similar issues too it seems.
The bottom line for me is that if I'm going to buy a new MB, I want it to work with the minimum of fuss. The attraction for me is the passive cooling and fan control options NOT overclocking ability. If I'm going to change I want to have less problems, not take on more.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:07 am

Firetech wrote:Thanks Erssa, I wasn't condeming the ATI chipset but the combination of ATI & ULI does seem to have issues. That combination is apparently better than with the previous SB450 Southbridge but again it could all be a BIOS related problem.

I feel that SB450 took a big hit from the press with the slow USB2 speeds. I think the fact was blown out of proportion. It looks really bad in benchmarks, but hardly effects performance, unless you are using external (USB2) drives. Then it's a deal braker. Imo most people stare too much at benchmarks. Too bad things such as stabilty, compability etc. are pretty impossible to benchmark.

Firetech wrote:The bottom line for me is that if I'm going to buy a new MB, I want it to work with the minimum of fuss. The attraction for me is the passive cooling and fan control options NOT overclocking ability. If I'm going to change I want to have less problems, not take on more.

This is how I feel as well. I was really dissapointed when Asus failed to live up to it's reputation with A8N-VM CSM. It really seems that there's not a single motherboard manufacturer, that could manufacture trouble free motherboards. I have read about tons of problems conserning about practically every chipset (well maybe not SiS, I guess they aren't sold enough to raise a fuss.)

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:20 am

It really seems that there's not a single motherboard manufacturer, that could manufacture trouble free motherboards.

For system stability, Intel is probably one of the best in terms of reliability in my experience, assuming you can find an Intel processor you like. I've got 9 systems built with Intel MB's, and zero problems - all are running great and run 24/7. Some are servers, some workstations.

I've also built 3 systems that are non-Intel - two Tyan's and one Asus. All of these have minor stability problems. One Tyan spontaneously reboots. The other Tyan doesn't always boot up properly. The Asus crashes while running some things in Windows like Flash player, some games, etc.

Maybe my situation is unusual, but it does make me feel more confident in the Intel motherboards.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:09 pm

TomZ wrote:
It really seems that there's not a single motherboard manufacturer, that could manufacture trouble free motherboards.
For system stability, Intel is probably one of the best in terms of reliability in my experience, assuming you can find an Intel processor you like. I've got 9 systems built with Intel MB's, and zero problems - all are running great and run 24/7. Some are servers, some workstations.

I've also built 3 systems that are non-Intel - two Tyan's and one Asus. All of these have minor stability problems. One Tyan spontaneously reboots. The other Tyan doesn't always boot up properly. The Asus crashes while running some things in Windows like Flash player, some games, etc.

Maybe my situation is unusual, but it does make me feel more confident in the Intel motherboards.

I meant to write trouble free AMD64 mobos.

I'm not too suprised my favourite Intel fanboy came to rescue

.

I think you are right in this. Most people with Intel motherboards/chipsets are very very satisfied. I have never heard owner of Intel motherboard complain.

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:20 pm

I'm not too suprised my favourite Intel fanboy came to rescue

For the record, my previous system was an AMD. Of course, this was one of the aformentioned systems that kept crashing, so I replaced it with the Intel. So if that makes me a fanboy...

My lesson from my last system is that stability is my #1 priority.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:57 pm

There are enough reviews out now to say this board get's the reviewers 'thumbs up' BUT my impression is that a significant number of them conclude that at this stage the better option for most users is the A8R-MVP at half the cost. If you want the bleeding edge of graphics performance and 'inth degree' of overclocking ability then yes the A8R32-MVP is the one for you but at a price.
As for actual owners reviews, a short Google skim (thanks Erssa) reveals IRQ conflicts and install problems with USB, sound cards etc with A8R (maybe BIOS fixable) and i got the impression the A8R32 runs 'hotter' than the A8R. Not ideal for Silencers.
Caveat: These are my impressions from what I've been reading in long reviews and threads.... I have neither of these boards!

My inclination is to sit back and await reviews of the ABIT AT8/AT8 32X and see how they perform.

TooNice · Post by **TooNice** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 3:07 pm

Erssa wrote:I think you are right in this. Most people with Intel motherboards/chipsets are very very satisfied. I have never heard owner of Intel motherboard complain.

Well, I fondly remember my Asus BX motherboard. It was one of the best along with Abit's offering at the time. And it still worked after 7 years, until I retired to a friend who only needed a PC for Word. I don't think she's still using it, but by the time, its probably been 8 years.

However, I don't recall the 820 chipset to be nearly as well received. And it wasn't only the RDRAM issue.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 3:24 pm

About stability:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/0 ... vp/11.html

"This is probably one of the best early BIOS motherboards that we've ever had in our labs - we were able to get the board up and running - and more importantly performing well - without any effort whatsoever. However, there are some minor stability issues that need to be addressed if it's going to live up to ASUS' reputation for building motherboards that are pretty much bullet proof.

When we reviewed the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe, one of the major positives about the motherboard was its stability. We gave the board a battering with our usual stress test consisting of Prime 95, 3DMark05 and IOMeter - it didn't blink in the slightest, running for well over 24 hours non-stop. The A8R32-MVP Deluxe was a little disappointing in that respect, because the 3D portion of our stress test dropped back to the desktop after roughly 17 hours on three different occasions and two different motherboards.

Having said that, we're confident that ASUS will iron out this minor stability niggle over the next couple of months with improved BIOS revisions. We say it's a minor niggle because the board was stable in everything we threw at it over the rest of our testing period, which amounted to something close to 100 hours if you include our stability and torture testing. We've found that poorly engineered motherboards point themselves out inside the first hour of stress testing - the A8R32-MVP is a well-engineered motherboard that is possibly suffering from a little BIOS immaturity at this early stage".

Well, this is my next chipset

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 3:44 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:Well, this is my next chipset

Agreed but which version & which board - decisions, decisions...

(thanks for that link BTW)

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 5:31 pm

Firetech wrote:
_MarcoM_ wrote:Well, this is my next chipset
Agreed but which version & which board - decisions, decisions...
(thanks for that link BTW)

Thank you for your pm, too

I think i'll go for Xpress 3200+uli, for what i heard is more stable than the SB450... But i need to know if there are problems with 2 Western Digital RE2 in mirroring under ULI sata raid, my actual nforce4 work well (but is too hot and have an active cooling), i had no experience with uli raid drivers, stability is my first priority... uhm, i agreed with you, decisions, decisions...

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:33 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:Thank you for your pm, too

No Problem!

I think i'll go for Xpress 3200+uli, for what i heard is more stable than the SB450... But i need to know if there are problems with 2 Western Digital RE2 in mirroring under ULI sata raid, my actual nforce4 work well (but is too hot and have an active cooling), i had no experience with uli raid drivers, stability is my first priority... uhm, i agreed with you, decisions, decisions...

Have a look at the forum linked by Sooty in post #2 of this thread (don't know if that's all just ASUS related but very interesting) and also here and specifically here at the ATI section of ABIT Forums. I'm sure I've forgotten others too so just Google it..

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:33 pm

Firetech wrote:I got the impression the A8R32 runs 'hotter' than the A8R. Not ideal for Silencers.

Read the articles again.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:39 pm

jackylman wrote:Read the articles again.

Thanks jacklyman, that one was from a UK forum users comments on the plain A8R-MVP.

one thing ive noticed is that the 580 chipset got a lot hotter than this one

Maybe I've mis-read his meaning?

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:09 pm

The RD-580 is only dissipating 8W (at stock speeds) because it's built with 110nm technology.

I clicked your link, but didn't see anything about temps.

My question is, how are the users measuring heat?

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:53 pm

jackylman wrote:The RD-580 is only dissipating 8W (at stock speeds) because it's built with 110nm technology.

I saw that in the PC Perspective review too. But he didn't mention the RD480's figure to compare.

jackylman wrote:I clicked your link, but didn't see anything about temps.

one thing ive noticed is that the 580 chipset got a lot hotter than this one

That's all he said!

jackylman wrote:My question is, how are the users measuring heat?

Sorry I don't know: test meter, his finger maybe...Here's Sooty's link to the whole thread. Maybe you can post there and ask him his test method

TooNice · Post by **TooNice** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:04 pm

Firetech wrote:Agreed but which version & which board - decisions, decisions...
(thanks for that link BTW)

I can't be bothered modding the board, so the DFI version is out (since it uses a fan for cooling).

That leaves Abit as the only other option (unless Asus does a "Premium" version of this board in 6 months time). But it is said that the Abit will only be released later this months. This seals my decision. I need a board next week, hence this Asus will most likely have my money.

Still, some people have reported issues with that board (see the OcUK forum thread earlier), so I am still a little bit concerned.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:44 pm

It depends where in the world you are it seems but the ABIT AT8 (RD480) is already out there. I can't find an AT8 for sale in Oz and guys in the US say there's a shortage but the UK seems to have them and maybe other parts of Europe too? As you said the AT8 32X (RD580) is due out in a month or so but is already up on the ABIT website.

I'm swayed away from ASUS toward ABIT by their cooling system, temp monitoring, fan control implementation AND cost so am going to wait and see reviews/user comments after:
a) a new BIOS is out & tested for the AT8 and
b) the AT8 32X has been fully released.

Asus RD580 is A8R32-MVP - Passvie Crossfire

Back on topic

Re: Back on topic

Thanks for the reply Sparkytfl!

Re: Thanks for the reply Sparkytfl!

Re: Thanks for the reply Sparkytfl!

Re: Thanks for the reply Sparkytfl!

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