Video Encoding

    DVD movies are something we are all familiar with, and many of us want to create backups of their DVD movies.  XMpeg is a program that allows you to take the VOB file and convert it to other video formats.  Today we will convert the VOB file to DivX 5.03 files, with SSE2 optimizations enabled to try to remove the CPU from slowing down the encoding.  Lets see the results

    What do the results show?  The difference between the 865PE based motherboards and the ATi based motherboard is around 7%.  Comparing the Albatron 848 based motherboard to the dual-channel motherboard is basically none at all.  Comparing single-channel to single-channel we see a 20% difference between the Albatron and ATi IGP.  There is the same difference when we move from dual-channel to single-channel with the ATi based motherboard.

    VirtualDub is a AVI to AVI converter that allows you to compress your video to a smaller size.  Lets see the results of these different motherboards, using the DivX 5.03 CODEC for compression.

    The results are somewhat interesting for the ATi IGP motherboard.  Compared to other dual-channel motherboards its about 28% slower than any other dual channel motherboard.  It doesn't seem that moving to single-channel memory makes a major difference in performance in this test as the ATi based motherboard gives the highest difference of 10% while the other motherboards only lose about 3.5%.  Lets look at MPEG-2 encoding with TMPGEnc next.

    Just as it has seemed to be for the other video encoding based tests.  The ATi based motherboard is at the bottom of the results, especially in the CPU time area where it is over 21% slower than its next nearest competitor.  In real time encoding it is fairly close to its competitors with a maximum of 17% difference between the top encoding motherboard, and the dual-channel IGP motherboard.  It even equals the DFI 865PE which is in dual-channel mode, when the ATi based IGP motherboard is in single-channel mode, but only in the actual encoding time.  Now that we've looked at video encoding and some games, lets see what happens when we look at some other areas

Other Tests

    First we will look at 3D rendering with Truespace 4.2 which allows the basic user to play with 3D rendering.  So lets see how fast this motherboard is in this test.

    The results show that the ATi based motherboard is not quite able to keep up with the other motherboards.  The difference is from 2-4% in dual-channel mode, compared to the DFI and MSI 865PE based motherboards.  In single-channel mode the difference is between 4.5-7.5% compared to the 865PE MSI in single-channel mode, and the Albatron 848P motherboard.  Moving to single channel with the Asus motherboard loses us about 4% of the rendering performance.  Now for OfficeBench, which may be used for the last time in our reviews currently.

    The results here are fairly close, with all the results coming under 40 seconds and above 34 seconds.  The one area where the ATi based Asus motherboard slows down is in the Internet explorer section of the test which is about 5 seconds slower than any other motherboard.  This is basically the difference between the motherboards is from 3-12%.  Overall the ATi based Asus motherboard is good, but only good enough for last place in our little test.  Next we will look at our last test, which is a synthetic test, and the only one we use, PiFast.

    Again the results speak for themselves, as the ATi based Asus board comes in last.  However in dual-channel mode the difference is only 2-5% compared to the 865PE boards.  In single channel, the ATi Asus board simply loses its performance, reaching a level closer to that of a PIV 1.8a using a dual-channel 865PE motherboard.  The loss is about 26.7% where comparatively the other motherboards lose only 4% of its performance.

Conclusion

David's $0.02

    This motherboard is certainly something that was interesting to take a look at, as not only was it a non-Intel based motherboard, but it was also one that has a integrated video card. In one respect, it can be viewed as a standalone motherboard (use your own graphics card), or it can be used purely as an economical workstation with onboard graphics. So did it succeed in both areas, or did it fail?  Let's look at the what we've talked about to find out.

    First the package and the motherboard itself.  The box is standard Asus fair as it is eye catching enough to be seen on the display shelf, but not too much to make it look really bad.  The contents of the motherboard are pretty good, as everything you need is provided such as SATA cables and software, and things you may never use such as, the game port, and the serial port.  Asus has designed the motherboard fairly well with the AGP slot location being both good and bad.   Good in that it has plenty of clearance before the next PCI slot, and bad in that with a video card installed you cannot really add or remove memory at all.  The power connector location and the extra hard drive header location were very nice to see.  

    The BIOS was a standard Pheonix BIOS that Asus has been known to use.   All the standard features are pretty easy to access, though if you do pick up this motherboard, make sure to upgrade to the 1008 or higher BIOS to access Surroundview.  Overclocking was disappointing as we only reached 225MHz instead of at least 250MHz that we are used to seeing.  One downside to this motherboard is that I had problems with sound and/or networking.  The first motherboard I had the network stopped working altogether after working for a while, and the sound would not enable for three days if you disabled it in the BIOS and then re-enabled it later on.  The second board would not let the ATi Catalyst 4.4 drivers be installed along with the sound card drivers, it would not boot Windows XP Pro at all.

    Performance as a motherboard was at the bottom of the group, though on most occasions this wasn't that far off from the top results.  As a video card it is pretty bad, barely making it near 30fps at 1024*768 in both UT2003 and Serious Sam SE.  It was only with MPEG-2 encoding that it reached higher than the bottom of the group, though it was more efficient in this test.  As for networking, this motherboard when working was pretty fast, about 140Mb/s, so slightly faster than your 100Mb/s network card at full efficiency.  Sound quality when working was good, basically your standard fair for an onboard sound card.

    Price is an interesting thing to look at for this motherboard.  Looking at it strictly as a motherboard, we could get a basic 875P based motherboard or a very good 865PE motherboard for about the same price.  As a dual mode motherboard, with video also included, it helps bring it a little better value as a motherboard.

Hubert's $0.02

At the time David initially wrote up this review, the price of the P4R800-V was about $114 USD. At that point, I certainly wouldn't disagree with him in that many Springdale or stripped down Canterwoods were very close to the $110 price point. Four weeks later (today), we can now find this board for just under , which is a pretty good price when you consider the overall package.

However, there was a reason for the delay as we've gone through three boards to get around some of the problems we've had with the sound and networking. Is it an ASUS issue, or an ATI issue? It seemed ironic that using an ATI video card seemed to have broken the board, but according to what we were told, other reviewers were not plagued with the problems we've had. Whether or not this is the case, we do suggest checking up on some of your favorite sites to see if they've experienced similar problems.

Good Points

• ATi based motherboard

• Very good included extras

• Surroundview works well

Bad Points

• Motherboard performance lags behind 848P and 865PE

• Average video card performance (though not targeted at the high-end)

• Poor overclocker

• Problems with our sample motherboards

Final Words

    If this motherboard had better performance in our tests in either/both video and motherboard tests, then it would be easier to live with the faults.  However the performance is not enthusiast level and our samples had some problems. We have yet to resolve these issues to our satisfaction, and suggest researching similar reviews to get all the information you need.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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