HEXUS.reviews :: ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe v Sapphire PURE Crossfire PC-A9RD580

[digitalwanderer]

Of course what companies may choose to do, is not to seed an ethical and honest publication such as HEXUS with its products for technical editorial evaluation in a timely fashion, or at all - a tactic that’s recently not worked out well for some companies.

The track records of various other publications indicate that they are willing to try to rake in advertising money seemingly in exchange for saying nice things about existing or potential advertisers. And if they're doing that, it will be you who’ll be misguided about the true merit of products, and left paying the bill for their unethical behaviour.

Obviously it would be a very dark day indeed if you, the faithful HEXUS reader, is left, like the readers of most print-only publications, with only advertorials to read.

So, be very suspicious of companies if you know that they don’t want HEXUS reviewing what they sell. And be equally carefully of companies that don’t provide HEXUS with products in sufficient time for us to be able to properly test them before we need to publish our honest evaluation when everyone else publishes their takes – on the day those products are formally launched. Such companies will, almost certainly, also have something to hide from you.

Furthermore, we're coming to the view – honestly held – that that you need to be wary of anything that gets published elsewhere, no matter how ‘leading’, ‘independent’, ‘specialist’, ‘honest’ or ‘reliable’ the editor might claim to be.

And don't be impressed by claims of having a "review policy” “in line with industry standards" – at least, not if the ‘industry standard’ is to publish editorial so that it attracts advertisers or keeps them happy. You might as well read the advertorials which litter the newsstands.

Now this is all well and good, but exactly how long did you know that the RD580 wasn't ready for primetime and why did you wait until now to mention it?

Seems to me sometime silence can be an "advertorial" too.

Don't hit me, I just had to mention it.

[geo]

First off, I'll acknowledge the clear, and --in my view-- justified, frustration that was getting vented in that afterburner.

One could, I suppose, read the below as a temporary result of that frustration:

Furthermore, we're coming to the view – honestly held – that that you need to be wary of anything that gets published elsewhere, no matter how ‘leading’, ‘independent’, ‘specialist’, ‘honest’ or ‘reliable’ the editor might claim to be.

Except that in recent months it seems to me that Hexus has indeed been "coming to the view" that there is a systemic ethics problem in the reviewing fraternity, and has been increasingly pointing at it. I could, without trying too hard, point at three or four instances in the recent past where Hexus has felt it necessary to start pelting other reviewing institutions, paper and virtual, with rotten fruit for perceived serious transgressions. And I wouldn't even suggest that such a list as I could personally provide was exhaustive --I might have missed some.

I'm not sure where this leads, in the longer run. . .just thought I'd mention it is being noticed by some of us at least, and with interest, and that we do not take the quoted sentence above as merely frustration with this specific incident at hand.

[Cannyone]

Well I, for one, am grateful that you have unloaded your burden. I like to be informed. That way I can take this into consideration in the future. But the time has passed where I'm even interested in the AMD platform. My question is: will there be any crossfire motherboards available for the Core 2 Duo platform? (It doesn't matter how soon - I won't be terribly interested for I'd say about a year - I'm thinking ahead to after Vista (DX10) lands)

On the other hand, I do wonder a bit about the issues that you were having. See I have 2 motherboards with Radeon Xpress 200P chipsets, that also use the ULi 1573 southbridge. They were made by TUL, the corporate parent of PowerColor. (They are model AX480A7-F motherboards) They aren't really good motherboards to be honest. As they don't have a very good BIOS at all. But I can't help but wonder if some of the issues that Asus had were related to that ULi southbridge?

[Cannyone]

Well my issues are in fact the result of a poorly developed BIOS. It's an AMI BIOS, but that's not what's at issue. It seems to have really been developed for a completely different motherboard, possibly someone's reference board, then moddified very slightly to work. The real issue is that many of the monitoring and other functions, like voltage adjustment, are not working at all. Several programs like CPUz read that the CPU voltage is set to 1.7v, when the BIOS says it's at 1.4v. However, when you try to make any adjustments to that voltage BIOS reports no change... CPU Temps also report high, but the temp sensor for my Koolance reports about the same temps as it did with my previous motherboards. So the bottom line is that I feel like TUL was just being lazy when they set up this board.

I was actually very interested in this Asus board for a while, but I really can't afford an upgrade of that magnitude when I know that I'll want to move to Core 2 Duo in about a year. I don't see the point of any extensive upgrade prior to Vista's release.

[chuckskull]

A lot of people are complaining about the article, but I have a X200 chipset, and I completely sympathise, i came very close to hitting it with a hammer it frustrated me so much, took me a month to get it stable, and resetting the CMOS is a still a regular occurence.

I'll be going for nForce5 next chance I have.

[Cannyone]

I still may get this board (the Asus A8R32-MVP). I'm fairly certain Asus is going to be better at supporting it than TUL is at supporting their boards. Besides 939 pin CPUs are getting nice and cheap nowdays!