The Sound of Silence?
There’s a certain degree of irony with the heading, especially considering how bad the onboard audio on the Asus board was. Though is was perfectly listenable, the rated SNR pulled from RightMark was in the lower 80dBA rating. This introduced a little more noise on the analogue line then what was present on the GIGABYTE board. We once again didn’t test the digital output because of limitations in RightMark, but it is of course rated much higher then the analogue output.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
The Asus M4A79T Deluxe is undoubtedly a competent AMD based AM3 motherboard. It has similar features to many other top end AMD motherboards made for the Dragon Reloaded platform. The layout is ok, and can work in most system configs. It even made some performance improvements in what was originally not so great I/O performance when compared to its GIGABYTE cousin.
The most significant flaw that comes to mind is the price tag. The board is as good as the GIGABYTE board we last reviewed, but it isn’t good enough to warrant a $20 – $30 price premium. Folks who are building custom systems these days are very price conscious. An extra $20 is nothing to sneeze at, and might easily go towards another part or accessory.
Other then economical concerns, there are some issues with performance. It doesn’t approach the GIGABYTE when it comes to overclocking prowess. After all, the GIGABYTE board is the world overclock champion on the AMD platform. The point against the Asus was the slightly noisier analogue audio output when compared with the GIGABYTE.
I was slightly annoyed by having to update the BIOS to get the system to boot. Not for the process itself, as that was easy, but I just don’t like it from the end user perspective. Not everyone has multiple processors they can stick into a mobo to get it to boot and upgrade. Many would have to spend extra money to go to a computer store and get them to do the upgrade for them or the hassle of having to take a restock to exchange a board that should be working off the line.
In the end, the Asus M4A79T Deluxe just can’t get out from in the shadow of a very worthy adversary in the GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (I hate typing that!). The ASUS is a great board, with solid performance, a decent feature set and it does have a one up with support for CrossfireX. However, pricing and overall performance including overclocking issues just keep it from shining brighter.
If you need a board with this particular layout and need to have CrossfireX, I would be able to recommend it. However in a straight up comparison to other boards, it still comes in just a close second. Hopefully as we review a few more boards in the next while we’ll have a better picture as to where the ASUS fits in.
Pros
- Solid performance
- Excellent features
- Layout has everything one would need
- Makes some gains in I/O performance
Cons
- Not the best overclocker
- BIOS update was required to get it running
- More expensive then similar competition
Overall Rating: 8.0/10.0
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