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ASUS AV8-MX versus MSI RS482M4-LAuthor: Evgeniy YakovinaDate: 14/04/2006
In the niche of value motherboards, the major portion is taken by solutions with integrated graphics. That is not at all a surprise since for most work computers the video card is needed merely to display image on the screen. What's the point of spending for a separate video accelerator, albeit of the low-end class, which is most cases is not a must. In view of the strong impetus given by engineers at the integrated graphics for the past years, such solutions have gained more popularity. Today, there is no motherboard manufacturer whose assortment does not offer models using graphics by Intel, NVIDIA, ATI, VIA, or SIS. It's hard to give a one-one answer who is a sure leader on this arena. However, among all the offerings it's solutions by NVIDIA and ATI which stand out and are able implementing not only the display of 2D image on the screen without using an external accelerator, but something really more than that. Among the latest developments by the companies are GeForce 6100/6150 and ATI XPress 200 (Radeon X300) which offer not only extended multimedia features but good enough performance. In fact, VIA is also trying to catch up with the others. Recently, this company finally presented its graphic chip Chrome9 HC IGP with support for DirectX 9.0. Motherboards on its base will be available on sale very soon. Today we're reviewing two motherboards: one by ASUS built on the VIA K8M800 in combination with the south bridge VIA VT8251, and Micro-Star (MSI) built on the base of the ATI XPress 200 chipset. Both the motherboards are aimed AMD Socket 939 processors are thus are equipped with onboard graphics.
A few words on the chipset combination - VIA K8M800 and VIA VT8251. At first glance, ASUS AV8-MX arouses surprise. It offers the AGP8x graphics port onboard, which is meant to install peripherals. In this case, the north bridge VIA K8M800 does not support the PCI-Express bus. To plug in a monitor apart from the capability of using the integrated UniChrome Pro core, it allows installing an external AGP8x video card without any restrictions. But the south bridge VT8237 offered by VIA for the chipset K8M800 is not used on this board. There is a VT8251 instead. For the purpose of increasing the board's capabilities, ASUS has implemented a more advanced version of the south bridge installed with the higher-end chipsets VIA K8M890 and K8T900. Therefore, there has been produced a motherboard with native support for AGP8x by the north bridge and two PCI-Express lines by the south bridge. Besides, there has been added the possibility to implement four SATA-300, instead of two SATA-150, which also makes the user happy.  There is nothing special to say regarding ATI XPress 200. Motherboards built on its base has been repeatedly tested in our lab, so there is nothing new to add. Let's now move on to the motherboards' specifications. ASUS A8V-MX
The package bundle is up to the mark of the pricing sector and is very scarce. Besides the board itself, we found:
 MSI RS482M4-LIn its turn, Micro-Star motherboard offers the following specifications: 
The board's package bundle looks somehow richer:
Since the price of the board is not high, the package bundle is sufficient. 
ASUS A8V-MX: hardware capabilities and components' designASUS A8V-MX, as it should be for a value motherboard with the integrated graphic core, is made in the Micro-ATX format. It is fastened inside the housing with six bolts, the textolyte is of brown color customary for ASUS produce. Despite the small size, the components' layout is made quite successfully and neatly. The heating components (in this case, the north bridge) are covered with a radiator.  In fact, we shouldn't regard the lack of a radiator on the south bridge as a negative point because even under intensive load the surface of the heat-spreading lid remained slightly warm, which eliminated the need for additional cooling.  The positioning of DIMM slots is successful enough, and with a video card fitted in place they are not blocked with memory latches. Since the board is able running without a graphic adapter, all the inconveniences related to mounting the memory vanish at all. The positioning of IDE connectors as well as the 24-pin connector is made in a well-thought-out way (the 4-pin connector is fitted near the frame of the processor socket). They are all positioned over the edge of the textolyte, which allows conveniently and neatly mounting all the cables without hindrance to the ventilation in the housing with wires sticking out from everywhere.  SATA-II connectors are also positioned on the edge, near the front panel and additional connectors for plugging in remaining four USB ports. The pins of the front panel (F-panel) offer color coding and signatures, so the assembly operator will easily read the purpose of all the pins without any instructions.  To plug in fans, ASUS A8V-MX uses two 3-pin connectors, one of which is meant for using a processor cooler, with the second one for a system fan, respectively. The positioning of ports on the rear panel is standard - only the second COM-port has been replaced with a VGA-output.  ASUS A8V-MX is aimed at AMD processors made in a 939-pin package. No restrictions have been imposed from the part of the chipset and ASUS, so the motherboard should run trouble-free both with single-core Athlon 64/Sempron/Athlon 64 FX and dual-core Athlon 64 X2/Athlon 64 FX 60 processors. In fact, the budgetary orientation of this product implies using just the low-end processors Athlon 64 and Sempron. The board offers two DIMM slots for DDR 266/333/400 memory modules. Therefore, to enable the dual-channel mode, both the slots should be filled. As is known, the integrated core UniChrome Pro does not stand out much with performance, so among the advantages of the chip VIA accentuates the good 2D image quality. But at the same time, we were not very happy about the parameter, and even the moiré was easily seen with the naked eye. Running ahead, I feel like saying that MSI RS482M4-L offers a much better image quality, whatever one may say. The disk subsystem is implemented with a south bridge, and the board's design does not provide any additional controllers. In the end, up to eight hard disks can be plugged in to ASUS A8V-MX, of which 4 devices should offer the Parallel ATA interface, with the remaining 4 - via the Serial ATA. Besides, VIA VT8251 supports RAID features and allows merging hard disks into RAID arrays of levels 0+1 and JBOD. The audio subsystem is based on the old codec Realtek ALC653. Its capabilities are known to all, so apart from the declared support for 6-channel audio the codec is not remarkable in anything special. The sound produced at the output is comparable to similar solutions on other boards.  The LAN controller is represented with the Realtek RTL8201CL chip which provides support for 10/100 Fast Ethernet.  Due to the onboard south bridge, there is support for eight USB 1.1/.2.0 ports, of which four are brought over to the rear panel, with the remaining ones plugged in with additional USB-plates (missing in the bundle) or due to the capabilities of modern housings. Unfortunately, the board does not offer support for the IEEE1394. The chip Winbond W83627THF is in charge of the system monitoring including control of rotational speed of the two fans, as well as monitoring of 3.3V, 5B, and 12V line. The module for controlling the processor's supply voltage is made following a 3-phase scheme and comprises six 1500 mkF, four 1000 mkF, and a few more of smaller value capacitors. 
MSI RS482M4-L: hardware capabilities and components' designMSI RS482M4-L is a low-end model in the product line of motherboards built on the ATI Xpress 200 chipset. Besides that, Micro-Star offers three more models that stand out with improved functionality. In fact, it is hard to say what a specific product lacks - on the other hand, compared to ASUS motherboard, MSI RS482M4-L looks much more attractive. But - all in good time. As is supposed for value products as well as motherboards of the mainstream class made by MSI, the board is of nice and comfortable red color. The board is fastened inside the housing with eight bolts, but in view of the somehow nonstandard positioning of mounting holes its use with some housings will be difficult. As is already clear, the model offers the Micro-ATX form factor. Radiators are there on all the heating elements, including power transistors. Of note is the pretty tiny size of the north bridge and therefore the radiator installed on the chip. At the same time, it remained merely warm during operation.  The south bridge of ATI SB450 is also closed, albeit with a minor warp. In the Internet, you can quite often come across the mention of some failures in the operation of this chip, which is related mostly to the USB ports, but however hard we tried to find "bottlenecks" the system demonstrated stability and was not conflicting to any of the USB devices.  The size of the motherboard, rather large for Micro-ATX, allowed the engineers to position all the components in a very convenient way. The major distinction of MSI RS482M4-L from ASUS A8V-MX is in the four DIMM slots which in turn do not hinder a video card nor are blocked by it when fitted in place. Similarly, we'd like to praise the positioning of power connectors, IDE and SATA ports - all is convenient and well-thought-out. Unfortunately, the front panel offers no color marks but only imperceptible signatures.  To plug in fans, MSI RS482M4-L uses two 3-pin connectors, one of which is meant for use by the processor cooler, with the second one by the system fan, respectively. The positioning of ports on the rear panel is almost standard, but the space for the second COM port is allocated to a DVI connector, but that is missing in the current version of the motherboard. Therefore, the first COM port was sacrificed for the needs of the VGA output. In fact, the bundle offers a separate plate for a COM port.  There is nothing to add regarding support for processors - at that MSI RS482M4-L and ASUS A8V-MX are identical. But the implementation of four DIMM slots onboard allows to increase to overall memory capacity to 4 GB. To enable the dual-channel mode, the modules should be fitted into slots of different colors. The integrated graphics is implemented with the graphic chip ATI Radeon X300. As you must have known by now, the core offers support for 4 pixel pipelines and is hardware-compatible to API DirectX 9.0. For the needs of this chip, the motherboard allows allocating up to 256 MB of RAM. Besides, MSI RS482M4-L offers support for the TV-out which can operate in both PAL and NTSC modes. The S-Video port is brought over to a separate plate provided by the package bundle of the model. The disk subsystem almost copies the capabilities of the previous motherboard, although there are some differences. First, the board supports only SATA-150 hard disks. There is the feature for building RAID arrays of only levels 0 and 1. MSI RS482M4-L does not support levels 0+1 or JBOD. The audio subsystem is High Definition implemented with the Realtek ALC880 codec. Apart from all the niceties offered by the new-generation chip, the package bundle offers also a separate plate with coaxial audio-jacks. Frankly, an approach like that in value motherboards is not common.  Realtek's RTL8100C chip is in charge of LAN. Like the previous motherboard, MSI RS482M4-L does not support the Gigabit LAN standard.  Again, the board does not offer support for the IEEE1394. The chip Winbond W83627THF is in charge of the system monitoring including control of rotational speed of the two fans, as well as monitoring of 3.3V, 5B, and 12V line. The module for controlling the processor's supply voltage is made following a 3-phase scheme and comprises six 1500 mkF, five 1000 mkF, and a few more of smaller value capacitors. 
ASUS A8V-MX: BIOS capabilitiesThe board uses AMI BIOS of ASUS' proprietary modification. For convenience, we gathered all the settings into a single table so as not to overload the article with lots of BIOS screenshots. As we see, most of the settings on board are unified, that is, make no difference from other motherboards. They include adjustment of integrated controllers, RAID arrays, system time and other system parameters. So we decided to omit their description. But regarding the board's specific features like overclocking options and memory latency timings, we are examining them in more detail.
The system monitoring is in the Hardware Monitor section. Besides that it allows tracing the changes in supply voltage and the rotational speeds of the two fans, there are also settings ASUS' Q-FAN proprietary utility. Due to that you can forcedly push down the rotational speed of the cooler's impeller or set the RPMs dependent on the processor's temperature.  MSI RS482M4-L: BIOS capabilitiesThis board by MSI uses a most regular AMI BIOS. Frankly, at memory settings configuration the board RS482M4-L lags well behind the competitor. The weighty shortcoming of the board is no only the complete lack of them but also the lack of possibility to enable the 1T setting for the CMD-ADDR Timing Mode which, as is known, adds much to the memory bandwidth. In any case, this "flaw" made by the company can be eliminated in further versions unless the engineers come up against any technical difficulties at that.
The system monitoring is gathered in the PC Health Status section.  In the end, we have to establish the fact that at configuring the system settings the MSI RS482M4-L motherboard is very scarce. For instance, there is even no such an elementary possibility like adjustment of the clock generator frequency. Performance comparisonsWe compared performance with the following test configuration:
We installed Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 on a clean hard disk. On the date of writing the review, all the drivers, including the drivers of integrated graphic accelerators have been updated to the most recent versions. For the needs of the integrated graphics, 128 MB RAM was allocated. Unfortunately, we had to exclude FarCry game from the tests because for some unknown reasons it hung on both systems. At the same time, the board with integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6100 graphic core did pass the test without an issue. To verify the speed of archivers, we used a folder with 162 MB files, in the tests run with video encoding from DVD to DivX 5.2.1 using a single-pass method, we used a 5.36 min DVD-movie.              Final WordsAs was expected, MSI's board became a leader in gaming tests, which is not a surprise. The twice higher number of pipelines, hardware compatibility to DirectX 9.0 and higher clock speed of the graphic core played their part. Besides, MSI RS482M4-L offers better 2D image quality and a TV-out. Among the advantages of the model is of course the high quality of sound, and full support for the PCI-Express bus. In its turn, ASUS A8V-MX has left ambiguous impressions of itself. As regards the weak graphics, all is understandable here - the UniChrome core is meant only for work, and any modern game won't start up on it; on the other hand, AV8-MX indeed pleased with rich memory settings, support for SATA II and stable operation (in fact, the latter can be said regarding the MSI board). The shortcoming of the board is the lack of support for the PCI-Express bus by the north bridge, which prevents from making use of the new-generation graphics. Nor the quality of 2D left pleasant impressions. By and large, it is up to you to decide which board to install, but we would recommend MSI RS482M4-L - inexpensive and well-made a solution.
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