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
Where the Deluxe 4 shines is its feature front, and doing so it takes advantage of everything the 890FX chipset has to offer. At its forefront is its excellent USB 3.0 performance and compatibility. Unlike most boards on the market that offer two USB 3.0 ports, ASRock offers total four USB 3.0 ports, and from our experience the performance and compatibility is top-notch. Out of the four ports, two of them are accessible at the front of enclosure via a bundled 3.5” front-panel bay unit. We had no trouble installing it in popular tower cases like Antec Nine Hundred and Cooler Master HAF 932. Coupled with whopping eight SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, the Deluxe 4 seems as feature-rich as any you can find in a today’s motherboard.
Another area the Deluxe 4 impressed us is its fan control ability. The board has total 6 fan headers, and 5 of them are controllable in one way or another via BIOS or the excellent OC Tuner utility in Windows. The OC Tuner Utility is the Deluxe 4’s command center for system monitoring and in-OS overclocking, and despite its appearance it does what it is supposed to do with no fuss. However, we wish ASRock was a bit more attentive to the individual headers’ locations. All six headers are somewhat crowded around the CPU socket, making it difficult to reach if you want to use them for your case’s front or side fans.
Overall, ASRock’s entry (the short-lived Deluxe 3 notwithstanding) into this high-end AMD market is solid, but with a couple of nagging issues such as over- voltage and tight memory parameters that hinder high frequency overclocking. We are aware that this is our first evaluation of the 890FX-based board and do not want to be unfair to the Deluxe 4 without comparing it to similar products, but at this segment of market users tend to expect perfection.
Putting that aside, the Deluxe 4 offers everything but the kitchen sink, and everything except the kitchen sink just worked without a hitch. The board showed an exceptional compatibility with a wide range of add-in cards, and its USB 3.0 ports worked out of the box with the included drivers unlike ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 whose USB 3.0 ports seem finicky to date. The way ASRock configured SATA ports for AHCI and hot-swap function in the BIOS is brilliant, and will bring smiles to users who have ever struggled to get hot-swap working in Windows. We feel the Deluxe 4’s MSRP of $180 is fair enough for the majority of users who are looking to build a Phenom II X4/X6 based system with reasonable 24/7 overclocking in mind and with room to grow. (N.B.: undervolt your memory!) Extreme overclockers and memory aficionados may well be better served by looking elsewhere.
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Kane Y. Jeong - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Anand has already covered SB850 in depth, so I linked to the article.http://www.anandtech.com/show/2973/6gbps-sata-perf...
Said that, I will get back to you after contacting ASRock as to your question. Thank you.
poohbear - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
that article doesnt address how TRIM is disabled w/ the AMD drivers. It might increase performance, but with TRIM disabled it makes the SSD have terrible performance in the long term. Please bring this up in AMD chipset reviews as AMD is just ignoring the issue. its a mess.Slaimus - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
Are you talking about the RAID driver passing TRIM to the individual drives in the array? TRIM in general is working AFAIK.stuartrue - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Do the AMD AHCI drivers support the TRIM command?DWeber - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Love the extent of your articles. Clean written, good facts, interesting NB-Frequency benches.But what the f* is a Radeon HD 5780?
Egap19 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Thank you for the throw review, but if it's first 890fx review why not asus or gigabyte? Heck MSI there too. Do a round up or something. AMD gets no love around here.BestBuyJock2 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I love the StarCraft 2 bench. It was an eye opener. I only have an Athlon X4 but I may test the same thing. Very informative review rarely seen these days. Thank you Anandtech!cousin2003 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
cousin2003; Very impressive article. Is the Motherboard available yet. I really learned about more about Thuben CPU's. Thank you.najames - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
It is rumored that AMD 890FX boards will allow passthrough hardware in virtual machines like Intel VT-d with some "updated BIOS", meaning a graphics card or video capture card and USB devices could be assigned in a VM. It would be nice if someone can verify this.I have briefly tried this with my Gigabyte X58-UD4P BIOS 13 and i7920 setup. It shows a virtualization option in the BIOS but Vsphere (ESXi 4.1) still shows it as unavailable. There is however a Beta BIOS I have not tried yet.
This seems to be a voodoo hit or miss on desktop computers although support goes back to the Q35 era desktop boards and servers.
beretta2013 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
You mentioned reaching 4.1Ghz on the 1090T, was that at idle in CPU-z validator or was that under full load in prime95? My $95 GA-770TA-UD3 can validate at 4.4GHz but 3.9 is the max stable clock speed. As far as wattage being pulled, my 1090T @3.8 & 1.42v draws 177watts itself under peak load in prime95; as quoted by the Gigabyte Energy Saver app. Cheers.