ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe
ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe
The new chipset supports up to four PCI Express x16 connections, though if you drop in four graphics cards, the slots run in x8 mode. The connection to memory and from the north bridge to the south bridge are via 2GHz HyperTransport 3.0 links. AMD CPUs have direct access to memory via the processor's integrated memory controller. In theory, this can mean lower latencies when accessing main memory as compared to the more traditional external memory controller, used by Intel-based systems.
Current motherboards based on the 790FX still use the older AMD SB600 south bridge. It's certainly capable enough, with plenty of USB 2.0 ports, but only four native SATA 3GHz ports (with support for native command queuing, or NCQ.) Additional SATA ports are supplied through an external Marvell SATA controller chip.
The premium edition of the ASUS motherboard also supports FireWire 400, Gigabit Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. It's a high end board costing about $100 less than the equivalent Intel X38-based motherboard: the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi Edition.
While the BIOS setup offers a rich set of features for overclocking and tweaking, it's not fully baked yet. There are still some minor issues with the system as built. For example, we could never get Adobe After Effects CS3 to run. Plus, reboots would occasionally hang, requiring a hard reset.
While these seem like typical teething problems with newer chipsets, AMD has had a long summer to iron out issue with the new chipset. We firmly hope that BIOS updates will solve these issues, however.
Since we've been reviewing CPUs using the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB graphics card, we decided to test CPU performance with that graphics card. We'll evaluate the implications of the overall Spider platform at a later date. For more details on the new chipset, check out...........
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