ASRock 890FX Deluxe: Comprehensive Motherboard Review & Investigation of Thuban Performance Scaling
by Rajinder Gill on August 31, 2010 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- ASRock
- AMD
- Motherboards
- 890FX
Timed with Phenom II X6 CPU launch, AMD introduced a new platform to go along and dubbed it “Leo”. Essentially, the Leo platform is comprised of the the following: Phenom II CPU, 890GX/890FX motherboard, and Radeon HD 5800 series video card. Instead of the obvious marketing, we are focusing on what has changed on the 890FX from the 790FX. The improvements are rather sparse, but there still are meaningful improvements on Leo platform over previous generation platforms and we covered some of those in the past.
While the changes are subtle, they are just about enough to make the 890FX the most advanced desktop chipset today. The most significant contributions lie in the amount of PCI Express 2.0 at its disposal as well as the official support of SATA 6.0 Gbps standard. Not only does it provide the most PCIe bandwidth, but from what we’ve seen most board makers opt to utilize the PCIe 2.0 lanes stemming from the north bridge for the boards’ PCIe slots and peripheral controllers unlike Intel’s PCH-based solutions that rely on PCIe 1.0 bandwidth then have to go through slow DMI bus. On ASRock’s 890FX Deluxe 4 we had no problem fully saturating the total available 42 lanes.
However one thing we find somewhat dubious is AMD’s claim of 5.2 GT/s of HyperTransport bandwidth. The HyperTransport bandwidth is closely related to the CPU-NB (CPU’s Integrated memory controller) frequency as we will see later, and in order for HyperTransport bus to supply 5.2 GT/s of bandwidth the CPU-NB should be running at 2.6 GHz or faster. We do not know of a shipping AMD CPU with its CPU-NB at 2.6 GHz, so that kind of makes the 5.2 GT/s claim meaningless. To be fair, the claim is on the chipset not on the CPUs, and we did not have trouble running ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4 @2.6 GHz HT Link frequency along with our retail 1090T’s CPU-NB @2.6 GHz.
The interconnect between north bridge and south bridge, A-Link, has been upgraded to PCIe 2.0 standard from PCIe 1.1 on 790FX/SB750 combo. The new south bridge, SB850, is indeed what steals the spotlight, providing six native SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and whooping 14 USB ports. It also retains its RAID capability from its predecessor, but we advise against complex RAID setups like RAID5 or RAID10 on chipset-based controllers. AHCI standard received an upgrade as well, from V1.1 to V1.2.
IOMMU is an acronym of Input-Output Memory Management Unit, and it is supposed to make virtualizing I/O such as the storage subsystem or video cards possible. Even though virtualization is gaining traction on desktops thanks in part to Windows 7’s XP Mode, desktop virtualization is still limited on CPU virtualization. We are still some time away from I/O virtualization on desktops, and in any case we’re not aware of any client Windows OS that support I/O virtualization. So this remains a check-box feature for now.
We are unsure as to why TDPs have increased for both 890FX and SB850, but without AMD disclosing datasheets for those we are left, well, unsure. We assume they did go up considering that AMD heavily touted 10W TDP for 790FX at its launch. This time AMD is rather silent on the TDP front. Lastly, we see AMD’s first gigabit controller native to SB850, but we haven’t seen any board that uses it.
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HangFire - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
It is good to see a USB 3.0 performance test in there. I would like to see another or more, especially something simultaneous- for example, run backup on one port (say, USB 3.0) and stream video from a webcam in another (probably USB 2.0). This test makes a lot of sense in that a user would engage in Social Media while running a backup in the background.It would also tell us if the system can maintain a steady webcam image while doing other work, something we would expect a 6-core system to do (if not hobbled by poor USB implementation). The test could be repeated for a port on each USB 2.0 controller on the M/B to make sure each USB port set is as able as the rest.
Kane Y. Jeong - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I appreciate your constructive comment. I will keep it in mind.Stuka87 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Really a great review. I almost wish I would have held out building a new system until these 890's came out with USB3 and such (I built last Janurary). But I have no real complaints about my 790GX.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Asrock has Asus as it's parent company and I thought that Asrock was supposed to be the low priced/budget branch of Asus. By taking Asrock upscale, isn't Asus just competing against itself?mino - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Not anymore. ASUS spun off it OEM arm (Pegatron) last year.And even when they had the same parent company, the design teams were separate since ASRock inception 7yrs ago.
blacksun1234 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
ASRock works well on the budget M/B market and try to offer more with lower price for high-end market. If you would like to get "Valued product" at mainstream segment, ASRock is a good choice.mapesdhs - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link
Very true! I've ended up buying several Asrock P55 Deluxe boards because this
performs so well (i7 870 @ 4.1GHz), costs very little (less than 70 UKP) and it
has excellent slot spacing (as with this review board, I really like the 3-slot
spacing between the 1st and 2nd PCIe slots; I use the 3rd slot for a SAS RAID
card. At least ASUS has done the same thing aswell). See:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/Asrock_P55_Deluxe.j...
I'm a tad out of touch with AMD boards atm, but if I was buying an X58, I'd go
with Asrock's Extreme6; it won't give the best overclocks, but the slot spacing
again wins it for me. And if I was looking for an AMD board, again I like the
890FX-Deluxe's slot spacing *and* the fact that it does have a 3rd PCIe slot
(I notice the ASUS board doesn't). Oh for a board like this with onboard SAS...
Ian.
PCR - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Don't you mean M4A89GTD PRO/USB3? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...Kane Y. Jeong - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Yes, thank you. Will fix it ASAP.poohbear - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Kane Jeong why didnt you mention in this article how AMD's AHCI driver doesnt support trim even w/ the newest 890FX chipset? Its supposed to be an enthusiast chipset but doesnt even provide a working AHCI driver?? For everyone that owns an SSD, we're completely left in the dark w/ any AMD chipset and SSD combo. Its august 2010, latest 890FX chipset, and on an SSD AMD doesnt even support TRIM w/ their latest drivers. This is unacceptable!!!! You guys need to address this in ANY AMD chipset review, what enthusiast wants a system that doesnt provide SSDs w/ TRIM support??? We're all stuck using MS default AHCI drivers lest we lose TRIM support, its pathetic and way overdue for AMD to provide a working AHCI driver. Please mention this in your reviews cause the vast majority of enthusiasts have SSDs, and an enthusiast chipset geared towards us without TRIM support is a joke.