OC3D Review: Asus Crosshair II AM2+ Motherboard

[JN]

"The latest release from Asus see's the Crosshair II blessed with Nvidia's 780a chipset. We strip the board past its copper clothes to see if it's a worthy upgrade."

Asus Crosshair II Review - By Rich Weatherstone

 

[Toxcity]

Very good review! Not really that good a board?

Only 11k on 3DMark06 with a 9800GX2?

 

[FarFarAway]

It's an AM2 board mate

That is some pricey board right there whoa

 

[Azza]

Hybrid SLI working yet chaps?

Good review as always, nice work Rich.

 

[w3bbo]

Very good review! Not really that good a board?

Only 11k on 3DMark06 with a 9800GX2?

Yeah m8, I was innitially dissappointed with the score but when you consider its AM2 the the scores can't really be compared to the performance of Core2.

It's an AM2 board mate

That is some pricey board right there whoa

Yeah - dunno if I would pay that with AMD lagging behind like they are.

Hybrid SLI working yet chaps?

Good review as always, nice work Rich.

Cheers m8. Hybrid SLI does work....sometimes. Occassionally it would refuse to automatically come out of hybrid SLI and lag like hell as the 3d game was running of the onboard vga @ 2560x1600 which I'm sure you can imagine was a very WTF moment. Took me a while to realise it was the onboard VGA doing its thing lol. All it took was a quick restart and things were back to normal. Most of the time it was unoticable so must have been working fine. Maybe a driver issue?

I tested the on board VGA's capabilities more indepth in the 780a preview hence it's sparse inclusion in the actual motherboard review.

 

[ionicle]

nice looking board, and good review

nice to see AMD fans arnt left out of the current market, all this new tech spring up left, right, and center, its good to see Asus havent just left AMD behind..

 

[Rastalovich]

Great review.

Very good review! Not really that good a board?

Only 11k on 3DMark06 with a 9800GX2?

Futuremark`s benchies are flawed in this way. Just as u take a Q6600 cpu out of ur mobo and drop in a QX9650, ur score will change, but if u look at the performance of games.... I could steal ur QX9650, replacing it with a Q6600 and u`d be none-the-wizer

However, breaking their scores down, minus the CPU score would have been a good recording. Particularly in comparison with Intel mobos maybe.

Looking at the mobo as a whole, including the onboard stuff, input/outputs, I think it`s great. Price wize tho, it`s definately not a winner.

 

[aGeoM]

Hi

Nice Crosshair II Formula presentation.

I just want to point a small mistake made by Rich Weatherstone, on his review.

I'm sure he eared about TBL bug on Phenom B2's, and how it could be fixed.

Well, some board's have the ability to disable the patch from bios, however even when this patch are disabled in bios, Vista (x86/x64) SP1 overrides it, and apply it by it's self, meaning a poor CPU performance, only using a small software program can make this patch disabled, allowing full CPU performance.

Test Setup

...

A fresh copy of Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit with SP1 installed along with the most recent drivers then applied. No applications/programs apart from the ones used in benchmarking were installed to ensure a totally clean fair environment to which you can base your comparisons.

Since it have no reference to TBL bug, and from the 9800GX2 SLI 3DMark06, it's obvious that he didn't disabled the TBL patch, making all benchmarks suffer from CPU performance.

As you can see in my Sig I achieved with the same board, a Phenom 9500 (B2)@3000 and 8600GT SLI GPU's, 12589 in 3DMark06 in Vista.

I hope Mr Rich Weatherstone correct his review, to be fair about real Phenom/nForce780a/9800GX2 SLI performance.

All the best...

Paulo

 

[Rastalovich]

That screenie shows 12k+ with an 8600gt! What the heck is all that about ?

Off the top of my head, replacing the gpu card will gain so many 1000 more points..

What I`m thinking is, with a x9650 and 8800gt, clocked air-wize, I get a biscuit under 15k.

12k+ a 8800gt instead of a 8600gt has to pass 14k surely.

If that`s correct, that`s outstanding.

 

[aGeoM]

That screenie shows 12k+ with an 8600gt! What the heck is all that about ?

Was to show my point about TBL patch not been disabled by the reviewer, giving him very low scores on benchmarks. 2 8600GT SLI btw.

Off the top of my head, replacing the gpu card will gain so many 1000 more points..

What I`m thinking is, with a x9650 and 8800gt, clocked air-wize, I get a biscuit under 15k.

12k+ a 8800gt instead of a 8600gt has to pass 14k surely.

If that`s correct, that`s outstanding.

I have tested one 8800GT on a different board (790FX) and the max achieved was 13k+.

But if you are planning to go SLI 15k+ are doable

 

[Rastalovich]

Ah yes SLI, ofc.

12k+, almost 13, with 2x8600 is still darn good in my book.

 

[w3bbo]

The only AM2 we have in our possession at OC3D towers is the 9600phenom and unforunately it's a very poor overclocker. So as the review shows, having quad sli makes very little difference when the clockspeed, and therefore the processing power is so poor.

I will however give the TBL patch a try even though it was disabled in the Bios and amend the review if needed.

 

[aGeoM]

The only AM2 we have in our possession at OC3D towers is the 9600phenom and unforunately it's a very poor overclocker. So as the review shows, having quad sli makes very little difference when the clockspeed, and therefore the processing power is so poor.

I will however give the TBL patch a try even though it was disabled in the Bios and amend the review if needed.

Hi

Even if you disable TBL patch in BIOS, Vista SP1 will enable it after loaded.

You can read here, how to disable it with Sam2008 tool.

The best way to check if TBL is or isn't enable, is using Winrar benching tool, if your score is ~300 it's enable, normal score when disable is >1000.

You will notice a better 3D performance, even with low CPU clock.

:beerchug:

Paulo

 

[PP Mguire]

Or better yet grab a Phenom 9850. This board was made for that CPU.

 

[aGeoM]

Or better yet grab a Phenom 9850. This board was made for that CPU.

Not exactly, the board is made for any AM2/AM2+ CPU's

Anyway a B3 CPU don't have the TBL bug, so it can be used with Vista's SP1 OS, avoiding the problem.

Be well

 

[PP Mguire]

The 9850s still perform alot better and an enthusiast board is made for the enthusiast cpu for that socket which happens to be the 9850 BE. The AMD Phenoms arent that bad, they just arent that good either. And Quad SLI is heavily CPU bottlenecked even with a QX9650 @ 4.0ghz (As well as SLI and Tri SLI 280s) then it will be moreso with a 9850 or 9600. (B3 and B2)

 

[aGeoM]

The 9850s still perform alot better and an enthusiast board is made for the enthusiast cpu for that socket which happens to be the 9850 BE. The AMD Phenoms arent that bad, they just arent that good either. And Quad SLI is heavily CPU bottlenecked even with a QX9650 @ 4.0ghz (As well as SLI and Tri SLI 280s) then it will be moreso with a 9850 or 9600. (B3 and B2)

True, very true.

My B2 9500 goes at +3000 and my 3rd B3 9850BE only goes at 2800, on this board. 1st did 3100(not stable) and the 2nd 2600 on DFI 790FX board.

 

[PP Mguire]

Thats odd cause most all 9850s are getting around 3.0ghz standard.

 

[w3bbo]

We will try and get a better 'bug free' AM2 chip for future reviews and the crosshair II will hopefully be benched again before comparisons are drawn.

 

[PP Mguire]

Im sure there will be some performance increase but i dont expect alot. Its sorta like these other sites doing reviews of monster video cards with crap CPUs and then say the GPU sucks when its clearly being bottlenecked by the CPU.