Asus Crossfire....

[Lazar]

Here, the Asus Crossfire costs about 115$ and the DFI Crossfire about 275$.
That's a HUGE difference.
The Asus Crossfire is even cheaper than the DFI NF4 Infinity boards!

Maybe the DFI boards are really overpriced here (only a few shops have them), is there such a difference in other countries too?

[Kadaj]

i thought asus were only doing crossfire for the intel platform....hmm cant quite remember where i heard that now

the P5WD2 supports Crossfire with the 0606 BIOS officaly, but that's the only instance where I've seen Crossfire and Intel even related with ASUS products.

[loonym]

initially listed at $199 at ZZF

[Bar81]

initially listed at $199 at ZZF

I see price gouging is still en vogue. That's WAY too expensive for a placeholder board that's as stripped down as it is - the LAN is on the PCI bus

[fareastgq]

I wonder if the deluxe has 8 phase power too, if not, I'll be going the Nvidia flavor

[Ket]

its way too ugly, in age old ATI tradition they should give the board a red PCB,asus are mad if they think we are gona buy that ugly mofo, im also deeply upset to see both chips are only passively cooled, not a good start considering the chipset can reach 70c :-S

[Lazar]

I just pre-ordered one, the price in Switzerland is really good: 160CHF = 115$ !!!
Should be here in 1-2 weeks...
Will then post some OC results with my Opteron 144 - CABYE 0536 GPMW (watercooled).

[jrw]

Anyone got this board up and running?

I'll have mine in a few weeks

[Scroatdog]

Whoa!!!!

If you're running only ONE video card, the "switch card must be placed in the black slot to give PCI-E 16 to the blue slot". Well, that pretty much renders two out of the three PCI slots USELESS.

Bad design ASUS. BAD design........ Won't be going with this board.

[Lazar]

That's incredibly stupid and a huge design error!!! Why isnt the first PCI-E slot (the black) the primary one? Would have been much better...
But maybe it still works if you use the black one as primary and put the "switch card" in the blue slot. I'll try it as soon as I get the board... and even if it doesn't work it'll be OK for me as I just need one PCI slot for the soundcard.

[JasonDTM]

I wonder if they will limit CPU VID like on the SLI Deluxe.... :/

[Sheik]

Well at least the ASUS actually seems to work

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27866

AFTER MANYdays of struggling with a DFI Crossfire motherboard, the new hope has arrived. We had a chance to test the Asus Crossfire A8R-MPV motherboard based on ATI RD480 Northbridge and Uli M1575 South Bridge.

We were told to look for this motherboard as this ATI – Uli combination will solve some of the ATI Southbridge problems. We had major issues with DFI board that we will describe review that is coming up but Asus board was bread and butter for us.

They have 2 x X1300's running as well.

More ...

[jrw]

I like this.

Crossfire for poor people.

I think I'll grap the Asus board just for the fun of working with the ATI chipset

[jiff]

First I heard you can run X1300crossfire without master or dongle

So lets get this right ATI release an X1300 crossfire enabled card that nobody will buy (as crossfire)
Then dosnt make the X1800 crossfire enabled without master (that isnt available)

Their Top Brass needs a kickup the

[Lazar]

AnandTech's review: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2617

It's all good...

[Prometheus]

The A8R-MVP was a shocker in my review at AT. I actually got to 330x9 stable in memtest86 with my TCCD and could boot into winxp. However, it wasn't 100% stable, but I was able to run 325x9 and all 3D benches in XP. In fact it ran 2 days on air wothout a crash at 325x9. That's the highest ever for this memory and CPU.

This is another board where you have to creep up on the overclock. It does not like going straight to high clock frequencies - you have to go up 5 to 10 at a a time. Asus confirms it will sell for about the same price as the A8N-SLI - $115 to $125 - so don't let the early gougers dissuade you.

The highest I could get on the DFI RDX200 was 305, which ran 3D benches but still failed memtest86. The A8N32-SLI made it to 310 on this same setup. All on air. You guys will blow these numbers away when you drop ratios and chill.

[jiff]

Need a volt mod or Hipro piece of kit when it comes

[jrw]

This is another board where you have to creep up on the overclock. It does not like going straight to high clock frequencies - you have to go up 5 to 10 at a a time.

Would a bios update make 325x9 bios bootable to your knowledge?

[Lazar]

The A8R-MVP was a shocker in my review at AT. I actually got to 330x9 stable in memtest86 with my TCCD and could boot into winxp. However, it wasn't 100% stable, but I was able to run 325x9 and all 3D benches in XP. In fact it ran 2 days on air wothout a crash at 325x9. That's the highest ever for this memory and CPU.

This is another board where you have to creep up on the overclock. It does not like going straight to high clock frequencies - you have to go up 5 to 10 at a a time. Asus confirms it will sell for about the same price as the A8N-SLI - $115 to $125 - so don't let the early gougers dissuade you.

The highest I could get on the DFI RDX200 was 305, which ran 3D benches but still failed memtest86. The A8N32-SLI made it to 310 on this same setup. All on air. You guys will blow these numbers away when you drop ratios and chill.

Nice review... and great board.
One question: if you only use one VGA card, do you really have to put it in the blue PCIe slot, and the MVP in the black, or does it also work if the VGA card is in the blue PCIe slot and the MVP in the blue (this way more PCI slots are free)?
THX.

[CrashOv3r1De]

Here, the Asus Crossfire costs about 115$ and the DFI Crossfire about 275$.
That's a HUGE difference.
The Asus Crossfire is even cheaper than the DFI NF4 Infinity boards!

Maybe the DFI boards are really overpriced here (only a few shops have them), is there such a difference in other countries too?

275 wth you talking about? The RDX200 is only 190$

[CrashOv3r1De]

This board sounds very promising. Reason I am interested is that anandtech and other reviewers are saying that X1800 XT crossfire beats nVidia 7800 GTX 512 SLi in every test and the crossfire option is about 200 cheaper.

Will wait and see when this board is available...

What options will the deluxe have?

[ben805]

maximum vcore is only 1.65v

[Prometheus]

Would a bios update make 325x9 bios bootable to your knowledge?

Actually, once you reach a stable 325 the board seems to reboot at that frequency fine - most of the time, but not 100%. Apparently an initial high OC set triggers a rejection of the settings in BIOS that is sidestepped by the initial rampup. Once a stable 325 was reached the board usually remembered this was an OK setting.

I emailed the last 2 good OC BIOS' to bigtoe to see if he might could do something more with it.

[jrw]

Actually, once you reach a stable 325 the board seems to reboot at that frequency fine - most of the time, but not 100%. Apparently an initial high OC set triggers a rejection of the settings in BIOS that is sidestepped by the initial rampup. Once a stable 325 was reached the board usually remembered this was an OK setting.

I emailed the last 2 good OC BIOS' to bigtoe to see if he might could do something more with it.

You're a regular sweetheart!

[Lazar]

275 wth you talking about? The RDX200 is only 190$

read the full post... it says "here in Switzerland", and yes, that's the real price of the RDX200 here, but again, read my full post!