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The AMD 890GX chipset was released just over a month ago and since that time we here at OCC have managed to get our hands on the majority of these newly released boards, with the exception of just a few. So, to close that gap, the good folks over at MSI sent us a sample of its offering based on this chipset. As a 890GX motherboard, the MSI 890GXM-G65 does have a lot in common with the other boards we reviewed, such as native SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 support, but it does come with one major difference - it uses the mATX form factor. This smaller size could actually be quite the silver lining for this boardm as the 890GX chipset is geared toward and offers a wide array of features for the home theater crowd. This will make it easily fit in most HTPC cases, which tend to be smaller in order to fit more discreetly in entertainment centers without taking up all the room of a conventional style PC. In our previous tests, the 890GX chipset has proven to be a worthwhile successor to the phased out 790GX, but will this smaller form factor from MSI hurt or help this versatile chipset?
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Back when the HD 5970 launched in November of 2009, it was the fastest video card on the planet. Fast forward almost 6 months and well, the HD 5970 is still the top dog when it comes to video cards. So what do you do to follow up the fastest video card on the planet? Well if you're Sapphire, you take the best and make it better. As ATI's largest partner, Sapphire has long been known as a source of high end graphics solutions that easily move to the top of the class when they receive the Toxic, Vapor-X or Atomic treatment. While I have not seen an Atomic video card since the HD 4890, the Toxic and Vapor-X cards have been making the rounds. The latest before this behemoth being the Toxic HD 5870 2GB that offered third party cooling and improved performance via higher clock speeds and additional frame buffer memory. Kind of the same story here, with the improvements made to the Toxic HD 5970 4GB. The HD 5970 is a stout card and Sapphire has made the Toxic even more robust with the addition of aftermarket cooling in the Arctic Cooling Xtreme HD 5970 as well as higher clock speeds. Lets see if the new kid has what it takes to move to the front of the line.
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Two six-core processor reviews six weeks apart? We must be in heaven. Well as you all have guessed AMD's very highly anticipated Phenom II X6 processors have now launched. The media embargo is over and we can finally reveal what you probably already know courtesy of the rumor mill. The condensed specifics of the Phenom II X6 1055T are as follows: 45nm SOI manufacturing process, 2.80Ghz core clock, Turbo CORE up to 3.3Ghz across three cores, 9MB of total cache, dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory interface, 125W TDP, and a $199 USD price tag. The 1090T Black Edition is clocked at 3.2Ghz, can Turbo up to 3.6Ghz, also has 9MB of total cache, a dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory interface, 125W TDP, and a $285 price tag. Being a Black Edition model the 1090T also has fully unlocked multpliers. Unlike the only other six-core processor on the market, the Intel Core i7-980X, these chips are targeted at your average enthusiast, someone who is looking for a lot more multi-threading power than their current AM2+/AM3 processor can deliver. Yes, to make full use of these processors' capabilities you need to have software that supports more than four threads, but that is becoming more and more common nowadays. As you will see in the coming pages, these new Thuban chips will absolutely appeal to those who take their multi-threading performance serious, yet who don't have an unlimited budget, nor a desire to upgrade their whole system. Speaking of which, the best part is that these new processors are compatible with over 160 AM2+ and AM3 motherboards, with a mere BIOS update. These new chips should prove popular among more than just the AMD faithful though. Because AMD really haven't had any way to challenge the high-end/upper-mainstream dominance of Nehalem-based chips like the Core i7 series, most enthusiast really haven't had their sights on AMD processors in far too long. However, after having extensively tested the Phenom II X6, we strongly believe that this product launch might be the turning point that converts a large swathe of price-conscious powers users over to AMD's side. For all you AMD owners though, this is definitely the upgrade path that you have been patiently waiting for...To view the complete review click here
When AMD’s Phenom processors were first released, they didn’t quite live up to the hype surrounding them but the mistakes that were made in the first generation products were soon fixed. The newly-revamped quad core processors –dubbed Phenom II- were soon followed by a long list of tri and dual core derivatives that competed quite well with Intel’s offerings on a price / performance level. However, AMD has still not been able to catch the lead horse in the high-end, enthusiast range of the spectrum and many of their chips have been relegated to the status of budgetary solutions to competing Intel products. In the next few months, we may see that gap widen as AMD gradually transitions towards their Thuban six core processors before jumping to a new architecture in the future. As the processor technology evolved, AMD realized their older 700-series AM2+ / AM3 boards needed a bit of a refresh and has now introduced the 800-series. Back at the beginning of March, AMD released the first of its 800-series chipsets; the 890GX. Motherboards based on it target consumers who are looking for a budget-conscious product with decent integrated graphics along with a broad list of features from native SATA 6GB/s to Crossfire compatibility to 8x / 8x Crossfire support. In our own testing we have found these sub-$150 boards to have surprisingly decent overclocking capabilities as well. However, many enthusiasts are looking for something more than a basic motherboard and want a robust PWM design for overclocking, dual 16x PCI-E lanes for high-end graphics cards and other high-end features. For these more demanding customers, AMD is releasing their 890FX chipset which will be used in flagship motherboards from literally every manufacturer. The 890FX itself follows closely in the footsteps of the outgoing yet still well respected 790FX and indeed, its specifications are nearly identical to those of the older generation. Nonetheless, with the transition from the Dragon platform to the newly named Leo combination we won’t see a significant jump in price which means that motherboards sporting the 890FX chipset likely won’t retail for more than a lower-end X58 product from Intel’s side of the fence. This translates into the possibility of equipping yourself with one of AMD’s 6-core processors along with a 890FX motherboard for less than a single Intel i7 960. If that doesn’t tempt you, we don’t know what would. In this somewhat brief article we will be taking a quick look at what the 89-0FX brings to the table in terms of technology and staying power. ASUS and Gigabyte have sent boards as well so while the reviews will be posted in the coming weeks, we’ll also give you a quick look at what the 890FXA-UD7 and Crossfire IV will be bringing to the table.
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The first wave of Intel P55-based LGA1156 motherboards have now been on the market for approximately 8 months. This is ancient by technology standards, so we have slowly begun to see second-generation P55 motherboards make their arrival. The main selling point of these newer models is support for SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0, but the board that we are reviewing today has quite a few other tricks up its sleeves. The Maximus III Extreme (MIIIE) is, of course, a Republic of Gamers motherboard that has been designed for the hardcore enthusiast. This is a $350 component, it is not for the weak of heart, nor the light of wallet. However, at first glance this model is miles ahead of just about every other Intel P55 motherboard on the market, even casting a huge shadow on Gigabyte's newest flagship, the P55A-UD7.
This new RoG model is designed around a sophisticated new power management system called Extreme Engine Digi+, which combines the best features from digital and analog VRM designs thanks to a newer type of MOSFET. It uses less phases than traditional VRM designs, but is significantly more robust. This new design has also unlocked advanced BIOS features, like user selectable PWM switching frequencies and voltage control. Basically, skilled overclockers have more control over aspects of the power delivery system. Adding to the MIIIE's allure is the presence of an NVIDIA NF200 chip, which allows this particular motherboard to have 40 PCI-E lanes for graphics use. This is 24 lanes more than a traditional P55 motherboard, which is limited to dual graphics card PCI-E x8/x8 setups. What this means, is that the MIIIE supports not only two cards @ x16/x16, three cards @ x8/x16/x16, four cards @ x8/x8/x8/x8, but five cards at PCI-E x8 each. While latter configuration only works with single-slot cards though, this motherboard can handle up to four dual-slot cards. Obviously, having five cards is useless for gaming purposes, but it it is very attractive for Folders. Features-wise, ASUS have really kicked things up a notch too, with many of the improvements being centered around ROG Connect. First debuted on the Maximus III Formula, this technology allowed users to monitor and tweak the most motherboard parameters from a netbook/notebook via a USB cable. We thought it was somewhat a novelty feature, but interesting nonetheless. Well now ASUS have allowed for a smaller device to be able to control and monitor your desktop, a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. There's also the new USB BIOS Flashback feature, which allows users to flash the BIOS without even turning on the system, the CPU/GPU/RAM don't even need to be installed! Whether or not these features are worthwhile from a day-to-day perspective is what we are interested to find out, so without further ado, onto the review.To view the complete review click here
If we rewind to a few weeks ago, ATI’s HD 5000-series sat atop the graphics card market without any competition when it came to offering DX11 compatibility and extremely good performance per dollar. Times were good since the competition didn’t have anything to offer and there were constant rumors of NVIDIA’s next gen products sporting horrible performance and power sucking characteristics coming from several sources. However, the GPU market just got a lot more competitive and even though the GTX 480 and GTX 470 do consume gobs of electricity and at times exude blast furnace-like heat, they have proven to be equal to the task of competing with ATI’s latest and greatest. While NVIDIA just launched their GTX 400 series after nearly a year of delays, ATI’s board partners are already well into their revisions of the HD 5000 series. We have seen numerous overclocked and custom cooled versions of the lower-end cards but the HD 5870 hasn’t seen much up-market treatment other than a few products sporting advanced cooling and minor clock speed increases. Due to the new market realities, several manufacturers have decided to cut loose and introduce impressive-looking HD 5870 cards which many hope will bridge the sometimes-substantial gap between ATI’s single GPU prize fighter and the GTX 480. Gigabyte will soon have their Super Overclock Edition, ASUS has announced a Matrix-branded card and of course Sapphire has their Toxic version. While we will be reviewing both the Gigabyte and ASUS versions very soon, it will be the Sapphire HD 5870 2GB Toxic we will be taking a closer look at today. Back when the HD 5870 Vapor-X was reviewed, we mentioned that Sapphire had yet to announce their usual limited-edition Toxic but it was on its way. Well, it has finally landed and in addition to sporting the expected high clock speeds and Vapor-X heatsink, this card also packs an interesting surprise: 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Many of ATI’s fans have been hoping the extra gigabyte of memory will lead to better performance at higher resolutions and IQ settings which could make this card a direct competitor to the GTX 480. What is even more surprising is the fact that Sapphire’s MSRP for the Toxic is $449USD, making it a good $50 less than the paper launched GTX 480 and a mere $25 more than most HD 5870 cards on the market. The only problem we see with this price is actually how popular it will cause the Toxic Edition to be. Historically, Toxic branded cards only see a very limited release and then they are gone for good. As with the HD 4890 Toxic we reviewed last year, we are not expecting stock to last more than a few days. There is no denying the fact that Sapphire has come to play with the big boys by launching the HD 5870 Toxic 2GB but the real question many people will want to know is how it competes with NVIDIA’s GTX 480. We intend to answer that in this review.
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Finally. After more than a year of rampant speculation, countless false leads, a distinct lack of credible leaks and more aimless discussions than we care to remember, NVIDIA is letting the GF100 architecture out of the bag. With the GTX 480 and GTX 470, they are ready to answer ATI’s assault on the DX11 marketplace and it’s quite obvious people are ready for some competition. Like it or not, even before their release NVIDIA’s GTX 400 series may have already been the most popular graphics products this market has probably ever seen. Interestingly enough, this massive amount of popularity hasn’t been due to any overt marketing tactics on NVIDIA’s part but was fuelled by the community itself. This actually says a lot about how anxious people are to see these cards make it onto retailers’ shelves. Before we really get into things, let’s set the stage for these new products. It isn’t exactly a secret that NVIDIA has had an amazingly hard time of it while ATI introduced their entire HD 5000 series DX11 line-up over the course of a few short months. The GTX 295, 285, 275 and 260 were all but discontinued since they never had a chance when it came to their price / performance ratio versus the 40nm ATI cards. NVIDIA has also lost a valuable portion of their market share to ATI considering the red team managed to ship over a million DX11 products before NVIDIA even had the chance to offer a single competitor. The main reason behind this delay is NVIDIA chose to proceed with a highly complicated architecture that proved to be a royal pain in the ass to produce in volume while their competition was able to slightly modify and expand upon an existing design. Not only did this allow ATI to achieve a 7-month monopoly in the DX11 marketplace but it also caused significant worry about the viability of GF100 itself. Nonetheless, the GTX 480 and GTX 470 are finally here and are here to stay…for the time being. The higher end of the two cards –the GTX 480- is the one we will be focusing on in this particular review and it will also represent NVIDIA’s flagship product for the time being. Accordingly, it is set to go up against the HD 5870 for the fastest single GPU crown while bringing technologies such as 3D Vision Surround, OpenCL support and the CUDA GPGPU programming language to the table. Talking about features is one thing but in what will be a disappointment for many, NVIDIA decided to give their current flagship product 480 cores even though the architecture itself supports 512. We are expecting a 512 core product to make its way into the market at some point but at least not for the next several months. Nonetheless, we have been told that even the 480 core version is considered the hottest-running single GPU card around. The lack of a fully-endowed card may seem disappointing at first but it may also prove to be a boon for potential customers when it comes to the amount of money they have to invest for NVIDIA’s latest and greatest. Pricing isn’t nearly as astronomical as some had predicted with the GTX 480 going for $499 USD which actually brings it within the budgets of people who can’t justify spending $700 and more on an ultra high end HD 5970. The price for this card is particularly stunning when you consider the launch cost of past NVIDIA cards: $649 for the GTX 280 and about the same for the 8800 GTX. Meanwhile, with the HD 5870 currently hovering around the $425USD mark before rebates, it should be interesting to see how the supposed horsepower of the GTX 480 looks from a performance per dollar perspective. We know you are excited to get on with this review but if there is anyone out there who wants additional background information, we suggest you take a look at our dedicated GF100 article that covers everything from architecture scaling to compute performance. We will be using some of that article’s passages here but there is a ton of additional reading contained therein.
To view the complete review click here
The birth of NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture has been a difficult one and the folks in Santa Clara are the first to admit that. Sure, there were tantalizing bits and pieces shown at the GPU Technology Conference and later at CES but the rumour mill continued to spin and cast doubt upon everything from the chip design to the manufacturing hurdles. What it all boils down to is rather than push a product out the door that simply wasn’t ready, NVIDIA has waited until they nailed down almost every aspect of the GF100 prior to releasing the final product. So, for better or worse the first day in the life of this new poster child starts today; the GTX 470 and GTX 480 are hoping to shake up the industry. Now that the so-called GTX 400 series is seeing the light of day after so many months behind closed doors and literally iron-clad NDAs, everyone from board partners to consumers are finally breathing a deep sigh of relief. In a DX11 market that is currently dominated by ATI’s HD 5000-series we have seen very little (if any) downwards movement in the prices of graphics cards over the last seven months. Rather, there have actually been price increases which were cleverly disguised as a way to even out production shortfalls so the media and consumers didn’t classify them as simple cash grabs. With NVIDIA putting in a showing after all this time, consumers may finally be able to benefit from some competition. At this point, the 480-core GTX 480 will assume the guise of a flagship product and take the lead against the current reigning single GPU champion: the HD 5870. With a price of nearly $500 USD, the high end market is where the GTX 480 will vie for dominance. On the flip side of the coin it seems like NVIDIA is also targeting the lucrative $300 to $400 market that was previously the unchallenged stomping ground for ATI’s extremely popular HD 5850. As such, the GTX 470 will start at a competitive $349 USD which translates into a mere 10% price premium over ATI’s current price / performance leader. From where we stand seeing pricing like this is very encouraging but it also opens up a huge $150 chasm between the two 400-series cards which will hopefully be bridged by overclocked GTX 470 products. At this card’s heart beats a 40nm processor with 448 cores and a clock speed of 607Mhz which is paired up with 1.28GB of GDDR5 memory. As will be the usual situation with all GF100-based cards, power consumption and heat were two of the more pressing concerns when it came to designing the GTX 470. Even with such a low clock speed, the maximum board power for this card is in the 215W range. Considering the competing HD 5850 consumes 151W at full load, this could be a bitter pill to swallow for people who are looking to cut down their electricity bills. According to NVIDIA, the GTX 470 is meant to offer the perfect combination of performance, price and features which will make it appealing to a wide range of potential buyers. Considering the supposed (we’ll get to the facts later in the review) superior DX11 performance of the GF100-based cards, many people could be looking at this product as something which is more future-proof than the current ATI offerings. We know you are excited to get on with this review but if there is anyone out there who wants additional background, we suggest you take a look at our dedicated GF100 article that covers everything from architecture scaling to compute performance. We will be using some of that article’s passages here but there is a ton of additional reading contained therein to satisfy anyone.
To view the complete review click here
With all of the focus on bang for the buck these days, it’s often easy to lose sight of the finer things in life. After all, in the age of “fast enough”, hard core enthusiasts can’t help but feel just a little left out. What is the world coming to when you can buy a quad core processor for $100 and a decently outfitted motherboard for even less? Well, today we’re throwing our frugality hat out the window and we’re going to take a look at a motherboard on the complete opposite end of the spectrum – the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7. Although you may be thinking to yourself that high end and P55 are somewhat contradictory terms – and you’d normally be right – the P55A-UD7 is so far from your average P55 board that about the only thing it has in common with lesser boards is the fact that it supports LGA 1156 based processors. The X58 and LGA 1366 is certainly Intel’s idea of high end at the moment but there is a lot of potential in LGA 1156 and a wide variety of processors at all different price points. Make no mistake; the P55A-UD7 is absolutely packed to the gills with features. Not only does it support USB 3.0 thanks to the popular NEC USB controller, Gigabyte has also provided SATA 6Gbps connectivity – both features not natively supported by any of Intel’s chipsets at the present time. And if a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports weren’t enough for you, there are no fewer than three additional storage controllers onboard providing more SATA ports than you can shake a stick at. Aside from robust storage potential, Gigabyte also provides a much more flexible PCI-E configuration on the P55A-UD7 thanks to the integration of both the Nvidia NF200 and PEX 8608 PCI-E bridge controllers. This means that the P55A-UD7 is not limited by the platform’s PCI-E configuration and supports not only SLI and Crossfire, but Tri-SLI and 3-Way Crossfire-X – features not normally supported on the socket 1156 platform. The P55A-UD7 has quite literally to many features to summarize, but Gigabyte has outfitted it’s new socket 1156 flagship board with a large suite of innovative software titles to provide overclocking functionality, power savings and even limited system control with a Bluetooth enabled phone. On the hardware side of the fence, the P55A-UD7 is outfitted with an extremely heavy-duty 24-phase power delivery system that we’ve seen in both the X58A-UD7 and the P55-UD6 and boasts a very elaborate cooling solution to match. Without further ado, let’s take a close look at the Cadillac of P55 boards – the P55A-UD7!
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