990FX Motherboard Roundup with Thuban and Bulldozer – A Second Wind for ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Biostar
by Ian Cutress on April 5, 2012 11:00 AM ESTTest Setup
| Processor |
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (6C, 3.3 GHz) AMD FX-8150 (8C, 3.6 GHz) |
| Motherboards |
($230) ASUS Crosshair V Formula (990FX) ($185) ASUS Sabertooth 990FX ($180) Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 ($195) MSI 990FXA-GD80 ($130) Biostar TA990FXE |
| Cooling | AMD All-In-One Liquid Cooler, made by Asetek |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 1000W 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory |
Patriot Viper Extreme 2x4 GB DDR3-2133 9-11-9 Kit GSkill RipjawsX 4x4 GB DDR3-1866 9-10-9 Kit |
| Memory Settings | Default |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 11.8 NVIDIA Drivers 285.62 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
System Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the power supply, while in a dual GPU configuration. This method allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
In idle power consumption, the FX-8150 with its newer architecture is able to more efficiently power gate itself. The Gigabyte board comes last on both processors, while the MSI has a good showing.
In video mode, it's all about how the motherboard decides to activate cores and/or turbo modes. Again, the FX-8150 seems to be the (in general) processor of choice, with the MSI again taking command of low power usage.
For OCCT, our CPU stress test, the FX-8150 starts to draw that extra power it needs. In this circumstance, the ASUS boards tend to use less power under either processor than their competitors.
In the case of Metro2033, as both GPUs are running equally at large load, it is all about how the motherboard decides to power up the CPU and assign turbo states. The Crosshair V Formula performs well on both processors.
CPU Temperatures
With most users’ running boards on purely default BIOS settings, we are running at default settings for the CPU temperature tests. This is, in our outward view, an indication of how well (or how adventurous) the vendor has their BIOS configured on automatic settings. With a certain number of vendors not making CPU voltage, turbo voltage or LLC options configurable to the end user, which would directly affect power consumption and CPU temperatures at various usage levels, we find the test appropriate for the majority of cases. This does conflict somewhat with some vendors' methodology of providing a list of 'suggested' settings for reviewers to use. But unless those settings being implemented automatically for the end user, all these settings do for us it attempt to skew the results, and thus provide an unbalanced 'out of the box' result list to the readers who will rely on those default settings to make a judgment. CPU Temperatures are not really indicative of quality or performance, even though one would postulate that worse parts may produce higher temperatures. However, if a manufacturer uses more conductive material in the power plane, this reduces resistance and increases the voltage at the CPU, causing a higher temperature but potentially better stability.
Analysing CPU temperatures is an observational science under our methodology, restricted by the fact that different motherboards use different sensors to report the temperature - some use the response back from the CPU to show temperature, while some connect themselves to onboard sensors. This has a direct result on any default fan profiles, as the Gigabyte board gave us almost zero fan speed while at idle, indicating perhaps a quieter (but potentially hotter) system. The Biostar seems to take advantage of this the most to represent the lower temperature (possibly to confuse reviewers...?), or there is a slight mis-calibration on the sensor readouts.
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fredisdead - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
The design of bulldozer/ interlagos is aimed at the server market, where it has absolutely smoked intel the last few months.That said, these are suspiciously skewed benchmarks. Have a look here for a better representation of how bulldozer really performs.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...
It's pretty simple really, AMD used the chip real estate to double the number of cores, vs using it on less, but more powerful cores. Seeing that a single bulldozer core appears to have about 80% of the performance of an intel i5 core, looks like a good trade off. For highly threaded applications, its a complete win, and they are doing it on less advanced geometry.
That said, AMD's main product in the consumer space isn't bulldozer, it's llano, and thats looking like a rather large success too.
Oscarcharliezulu - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
Nicely written review Ian, was a pleasure to read. I like to hear subjective impressions as well as the facts and figures.Looking at an upgrade I thought to support AMD this time around. The boards seem very well featured for the price compared to intel (though they are catching up) and provide good sata3 and USB support. The problem is the BD cpu's run hot, slow and old software won't run well on it compared to older thubans.
My question- is AMD looking to provide support for more than 4 dimm sockets so we can run large amounts of ram in the future?
quanta - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Ironically, the A70M/A75 'Hudson' chips, which are designed for the non-FX CPU, actually has built-in USB 3 support that even SB950 doesn't have! The 9-series is supposed to be the enthusiast choice, how can AMD dropped the ball even BEFORE it can pick it up? Compare to the CPU that AMD has designed and built, the I/O support chip design is simple, yet AMD can't even get USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3 to at least relieving some performance bottleneck. If AMD can't even get the chip set right, there is no way in silicon hell for AMD to keep its dwindling fan base, at ANY price/performance bracket.primonatron - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
That audio chip on the ASUS ROG motherboard IS a Realtek one. They just allow the installation of a X-Fi utility on top for sound effects.You can see the realtek drivers are required on the ASUS website, but an X-Fi utility is also provided.
Marketing hogwash. :(
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/Cross...
cocoviper - Thursday, April 19, 2012 - link
I'm not defining $240 as the limit for Enthusiast CPUs, I'm saying AMD doesn't have any CPUs that are competitive above that price-point.What the category is called is semantics. We could break the entire line into 100 different categories and it wouldn't change the fact that AMD doesn't have any consumer CPUs in the top 3/4 of the market.
I wasn't quoting Anand like he what he says is law or something, I was noting AMD's strategy day where getting out of the high end market was discussed.
Don't you believe AMD, and ultimately all of us as consumers are at a disadvantage if AMD's best product is capped at $250 or so, leaving $250-up-to-however much Intel wants to charge all their domain? How would you feel if the Radeon series only had products in the lower 25% of the $0-$700 Videocard market? Does the best Radeon being capped at $175 seem like it would keep Nvidia competitive in performance and price?
cocoviper - Thursday, April 19, 2012 - link
Isn't arguing about what price-point defines enthusiast the very definition of semantics? Why don't we just make all processors enthusiast, regardless of price. There AMD and Intel now both make enthusiast processors.To return to the point, Intel's enthusiast processors are the only ones occupying the top 3/4 of the market in cost to end customers. Cost is determined by the market; what people will and will not buy. This is why AMD just announced a price cut on the 7000 series to account for the Kepler launch. Competitive performance and prices keep all suppliers in the market in check, and the end consumer benefits.
The point is AMD is ceding the top 3/4 of the market, and even if they make $200 "enthusiast" processors, Intel is free to charge whatever they like to people that need or want high-end performance. This is bad for all of us, and lame on AMD's part.
menlg21p - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
I made a mistake of installing network genie, and it doesn't show up in my programs and features. I cannot uninstall this program. There is no option for execution on startup. So it always starts up on boot. And there is nothing in the directories that pertain to uninstall. Also no online-content about this feature. Ugh, MSI, what are you doing? Why did you suggest this "crap" on my driver disk. REALLY?