Asus PC-DL Deluxe: 875 with Dual Xeons
by Wesley Fink on September 6, 2003 12:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Asus PC-DL: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
ASUS' RMA policy is pretty straight forward as follows:
“Please provide the following information so that we may process your request for warranty repair service. Once we have obtained that information from you, we will issue an RMA # and provide the proper shipping instructions. Please read and provide all of the information below. We cannot complete your request, if all of the information below is not
PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH:
1. THE MODEL & SERIAL NUMBER OFF OF YOUR PRODUCT model (name of product) serial# (10 digits/characters long, no dashes).
ASUS Computer International (USA) is a warranty repair service center. Please contact place of purchase for credit, refund, upgrade, or advance replacement. Asus does not provide these services under any circumstances.
2. YOUR FULL NAME/NAME OF COMPANY (Only provide company name if the shipping address is to a company).
3. YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS (no PO boxes please).
4. YOUR DAYTIME PHONE/FAX NUMBER.
ASUS Does not cover physical damage. Please refer to page 2 of your users manual. There is a $15.00 fee to replace a broken socket. There is a $40.00 fee to repair all other physical damage. If a product is not repairable, the product will be sent back to the customer. If a product is sent in with physical damage and is not accompanied with a payment, the product will be rejected and customers will not be reimbursed for shipping charges. A payment can be made by check, money order (payable to ASUS), or a credit card#. The payment must be sent in with the damaged product. Customers from Canada must make payments with a credit card number.”
This is a fairly straightforward RMA policy, with nothing unusual that stands out. You're asked for quite a bit of information in regards to exactly what has to be RMA’d, but this is not unusual in any of the RMA procedures we have seen. Everything else is self-explanatory.
ASUS' tech support response time did not improve from the last time we looked at an ASUS motherboard. At that time, ASUS had yet again missed our 72 hour deadline, but they finally did reply to our email request 18 days after it was sent. The same pattern was repeated this time around, with ASUS again completely missing our 72 hour deadline. After so many missed tech support emails, it's clear your expectation with ASUS should be that your technical problem may get a reply some day!
While ASUS' RMA policy isn't too different from the other top tier motherboard makers, their tech support is still severely lacking. We sincerely hope Asus will finally take these issues seriously, and make efforts to fix a problem that has driven away many potential customers.
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Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Xeon DPs are still at the 533 right now. Xeon MPs are worse off at just 400. Faster Xeons are just around the corner though.sprockkets - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Aren't the Xenons at 667FSB? But as usual, they share the bandwidth, which is really bad since they crave bandwidth, but good for memory access. But clearly the HT idea is faster.Running though at 800 maybe really too hard to do, or not ?
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Remember Xeons were built for the server market where stability is king. Intel knew this and this is why the 533MHz FSB has stuck around so long. As Intel rolls out more 800Mhz FSB chipsets and P4 chips the 800Mhz FSB Xeon should follow several months later. The same process could be seen back when the 400Mhz FSB Xeons were around.Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Well don't take my word for it, wait for the results yourself and then you can admit you are a fool! Clueless kids looking to argue... What a waste of time.Anonymous User - Sunday, September 7, 2003 - link
Is HyperThreading enabled for those Dual Xeons?Anonymous User - Sunday, September 7, 2003 - link
@13 "it would not improve performance enough to even be competitive"lol... what reviews have you been reading? the extra fsb makes a huge difference! THG overclocked the Xeons by 7 mhz and averaged somewhere around 4-4.5% performance increase! That's pretty damn significant. Even bringing the Xeons up to 667 FSB would make it a very good performer!
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Don't believe everything you read... ESPECIALLY from Intel. Go read THG's review and *maybe* you'll have a better appreciation for why Intel ain't likely to release a 800 MHS FSB Xeon any time soon and it would not improve performance enough to even be competitive when a 2.0 Gig. Opteron/A64 blows the doors off a dual 3.06 Gig. Xeon. If you wanna feel bad... look at how the dual Opteron beats up on a dual Xeon.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Read the news -- Intel has said it WILL produce 800Mhz FSB Xeons (when is a bit of a question: the last report I read over a month ago said Q1 '04 but they may have moved it up -- that's what this article seems to imply).Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
There are technical reasons why the Xeon can't do 800 MHz FSB. Tom's Hardware went into some of the reasons in their dual Xeon test where Opteron also smoked the Xeon even with the new L3 cache. The reality is that Intels current processors have just become obsolete with Opteron and A64. The benches for A64 will show equal or better performance for a single CPU than Opteron. For multi-processor systems above (4) CPUs the Opteron has an advantage over the A64. As the benches show Intel simply has nothing to compete in either the desktop or server segments and soon the A64 will be available in laptop to so Intel needs to get it in gear. Needless to say all Opteron/A64 CPUs will run both 32-bit and 64-bit O/S's. Linux has been available and Windoze will be available soon. AMD has definitety made a qunatum performance leap over Intel this time, no doubt.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Remember that server boards have to go through more stringent evaluation then desktop boards. I don't think Intel even considers 800Mhz FSB stable enough for their Xeons yet, and it's a shame. There is only so much increasing your L2 cache size can do for you. I don't think you can use 2.4Cs on this board even if you could find a socket adapter -- remember the 'overclocking settings' were limited to 133->165 (that's almost the 667Mhz FSB that Intel might move the Xeon to soon). So you'd be underclocking it by at least 17%, and at that point why bother? That's if you can find some video card that will take a 79Mhz AGP speed -- good luck with that.