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ASUS M2R32 MVP Clocking like a Banshee
(Review by MS, Dec. 19, 2006)

Final Thoughts

After the somewhat lackluster M2N32 Deluxe, ASUS finally puts out another cutting edge board. Given the constraints and requirements, the layout is about as good as it gets and it will be ready to accommodate even some hotter-than-hell R600-based cards, provided that those will finally see the light of the day without the monthly subscription to liquid N2 supplies rumored to be required for the current silicon.

The overall tuning of the board appears to be right on target, there were no stability issues whatsoever and whether the board is a quarter of a percent slower than any other competing product really doesn't matter other than on paper. Moreover, the slightly more conservative baseline tuning pays off in form of an excellent overclocking potential. Up to 325 MHz bus speed, the M2R32 was rock solid without even a hint of stability problems.

As the MVP moniker alludes to, the M2R32 MVP does not feature the most opulent bundle in the world, in fact, if ASUS had named it "Spartan" instead of MVP, it would have been just on target as well. A lonely dual USB port bracket is where the hardware bundle starts - and ends, the documentation is overtly missing but none of that really matters too much, instead of clutter, the bundle provides essentials - everything else can be found on ebay. And don't quote that crap about "a thirty $ value", it is only valuable if it is used.

Nobody is perfect, though and Spartans never were famous for their music, rumor has it that their vocals were restricted to battle-cries where a little hissing and chirping added character. Along these lines, the on-board audio of the M2R32 MVP is a big let-down, noise filtering appears to be entirely absent from this board. Granted, with really bad speakers, it probably won't matter, or, alternatively, the S/PDIF might be a the way to turn the board into a nightingale.

All in all, though, there is finally a board that provides competition for nVidia's dominance in the chipset world and it does - at least according to the latest mergers, provide an in-house solution for AMD that could become very important, given the never quite dying rumors about the Intel - nVidia alliance.

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