Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top

Asus A8V Deluxe: Features and Layout

Asus A8V Deluxe - Revision 2.0 Motherboard Specifications
CPU Interface	Socket 939 Athlon 64
Chipset	VIA K8T800 PRO/VT8237
Bus Speeds	200MHz to 300MHz (in 1MHz increments)
CPU Ratios	4x - 20x in 0.5x increments
PCI/AGP Speeds	Auto, 66.66/33.33, 75.4/37.7
HyperTransport	Auto, 200MHz to 1GHz (1x-5x)
Core Voltage	0.80V to 1.80V in 0.025V increments
DRAM Voltage	Auto, 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.1V increments
AGP Voltage	1.5V, 1.6V
V-Link Voltage	2.5V, 2.6V
Memory Slots	Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Unbuffered Memory to 4GB
Expansion Slots	1 AGP 8X Slot 5 PCI Slots
Onboard SATA/IDE RAID	2 SATA 150 drives by VIA VT8237 Can be combined in RAID 0, 1, JBOD PLUS 2 SATA by Promise 20378
Onboard IDE	Two Standard VIA ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) PLUS 1 IDE 133/100/66 by Promise 20378
Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394	8 USB 2.0 ports supported by VIA VT8237 2 IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports by VIA VT6307
Onboard LAN	Gigabit Ethernet by Marvell 88E8001
Onboard Audio	Realtek ALC850 8-Channel with SPDIF
Tested BIOS	1006 Beta 2

When Asus first introduced the A8V Deluxe it was the only Socket 939 board we had received with no AGP/PCI lock. Asus did not advertise an AGP/PCI lock and, in fact, it was not even listed as an option. When we talked with Asus about why they would leave out such a key feature of the VIA K8T800 PRO chipset, we were told Asus had concerns about the stability of the feature, and would not release a board with a lock until they were confident of the stable operation of the feature. While we did receive several prototypes with impressive performance and a working lock, Asus US did not give us the go-ahead that these interim designs would ever become production boards. For that reason, we did not believe it was fair to AnandTech readers to review an excellent design that they might never see in production.

Several weeks ago, Asus advised that they had completed a new Revision 2.0 with a number of board refinements and a working PCI/AGP lock that would soon be released. We had been very pleased with the revisions of the A8V we had evaluated, so we had great expectations of Revision 2.0. As you will see in the performance numbers and overclocking of the Asus A8V we were not disappointed.

The A8V Deluxe is the top-of-the-line Asus board for Socket 939, as you see reflected in the feature set. The A8V can be considered an update of the successful Asus K8V with the significant addition of the VIA K8T800 PRO chipset with, finally, a working PCI/AGP lock. Asus tells us that Revision 2.0 is more than just the addition of a production PCI/AGP lock, as they also used the update as an opportunity to refine the design.

As the Asus flagship Socket 939 the A8V Deluxe provides all the expected VIA K8T800 PRO/VT8237 features like 2-drive SATA RAID, 8 USB ports, and Hyper Transport to 1GHz. In addition Asus adds Marvell Gigabit LAN, The Promise PDC20378 RAID controller supporting 2 more SATA drives plus an additional IDE connector, Firewire, and the Realtec ALC850 8-channel codec. Asus calls their top boards AI, and the A8V includes a long list of proprietary Asus AI features like C.P.R., AI Net, AI BIOS, EZ Flash BIOS, and Q-Fan 2 fan-speed controls. The A8V also fully supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet.

Too often, we forget to mention that Asus is a huge proponent of Wi-Fi, and most of their boards include Wi-Fi capabilities. The A8V Deluxe is another Wi-Fi Home board, but the included adapter is now the higher-speed Wi-Fi G instead of the older and slower B standard. Asus even includes a desktop antenna to ease your communication with a wireless router or to serve as host for other Wi-Fi computers.

The overclocking controls are excellent in their range as we have come to expect on Asus boards. Noteworthy are the ratios in fine 0.5x ratios which makes OC fine-tuning that much easier on 939 CPUs. The CPU voltage also covers a very wide range from 0.8V to 1.80 volts. Our only complaint here is that 300 CPU Clock is a little short for a board that can do 289 at 1:1 memory, and the memory voltage controls are really limited at a top of 2.8V when we have performance memory warranted to 3.0V. Otherwise the variety and range of BIOS adjustments is excellent.

The layout of the A8V Deluxe is excellent. Both the 20-pin ATX and the 4-pin 12V connectors are on board edges and don't interfere with the CPU. The IDE connectors are in our preferred upper right edge of the board. Some will hate the floppy edge connector, but we liked getting it out of the way, and the floppy is also a connector many users don't use any way. The 4-dimm connectors, for up to 4GB of Dual-Channel memory, are well clear of the AGP 8X slot when changing memory. Asus is an advocate of quiet, failure-free passive chipset cooling, and you will see that in the massive heatsink used on the Northbridge. There's little to complain about in the layout of the Asus A8V Deluxe Rev.2.

Rear panel I/O is also very complete, including 6 audio mini jacks, both optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, 4 USB, LAN, Firewire, 1 serial port, parallel port, and the usual PS2 keyboard and mouse ports. We were particularly pleased to see easily accessible optical and coax SPDIF ports and wish other manufacturers paid as much attention to this feature as Asus has in their recent board designs.