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 ESTMSI 990FXA-GD80 In The Box
For a 990FX board, MSI has put thought and effort into what we get in the box here. For $195, it is good to see this much in the box! As the USB 3.0 port is at a right angle, the USB 3.0 bracket supplied has the option of going to the back of the case or in the front by removing the bracket. In terms of what we get:
IO Shield
Driver CD
User Guides
Three flexible SLI connectors
Six SATA cables (locking, right angled)
Two Molex to SATA power cables
USB 3.0 bracket
Image courtesy of Newegg
Board Features
| MSI 990FXA-GD80 | |
| Price | Link to Newegg |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | AM3+ |
| CPU Support | AMD FX/Phenom II/Athlon II/Sempron |
| Chipset | AMD 990FX |
| Base Clock Frequency | 200.02 MHz |
| Core Voltage | Auto, Range Dependant on CPU |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, 4x to 32.5x |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, 1.199 V to 2.460 V |
| DRAM Command Rate | Auto, 1T or 2T |
| Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB Up to Dual Channel Support for DDR3, 800-2133 MHz, |
| Expansion Slots |
3 x PCIe Gen2 x16 (x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8) 2 x PCIe Gen2 x4 2 x PCIe Gen2 x1 1 x PCI |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 6 x SATA 6 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 |
| Onboard |
6 x SATA 6 Gbps (SB950) 5 x Fan Headers 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x S/PDIF Output Header 2 x USB 2.0 Headers 1 x USB 3.0 Headers 1 x IEEE1394 Header 1 x Serial Port Header 1 x Clear CMOS Header Power/Reset Buttons 1 x OC Genie Button 1 x TPM Module Header |
| Onboard LAN | Realtek 8111E |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC892 |
| Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector |
| Fan Headers |
1 x CPU Fan Header 4 x SYS Fan Headers |
| IO Panel |
2 x Keyboard/Mouse PS2 Port 1 x Optical SPDIF Output 1 x Coaxial SPDIF Output 1 x Gigabit Ethernet 2 x USB 3.0 4 x USB 2.0 2 x eSATA / USB 2.0 Combo Ports 1 x Clear CMOS Button Audio Outputs |
| BIOS Version | B80 |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
Amazingly the MSI board is the only one which hits the 200 MHz base frequency spot on. The other boards hover at 200.7 MHz (or 201.3 MHz) due to the way the frequency is determined. As a result, you would expect the performance to be a little worse on the MSI, unfortunately. For features, there is not anything out of the ordinary here compared to the other 990FX products apart from the odd fan header arrangement. We also have another Realtek NIC/Audio combination, as well as a three year warranty.
Software
Rather than attempt an all-in-one solution for their software, MSI are using the ‘bombard’ approach, as the majority of their software features come under different installations and names. The major one is Control Center:
Control Center is the face of overclocking, voltages and the limited fan controls. With this software you can apply OC Genie, unlock cores in your processor, or turn the LEDs on the motherboard off if they bother you.
Another important element in the MSI arsenal is Live Update 5, a piece of software I rather like. Live Update 5 will analyze your system in terms of BIOS, drivers and utilities and double check with the MSI servers if you have the latest versions. If you do not, then the system will ask if you want to download the necessary files. While it sounds like a good system, there is one major drawback – it does not tell you how big the files are! It also likes to download whole packages, and waiting for a 130 MB audio driver update does not sound like fun. However, it is useful for BIOS updates.
Also available from MSI is Network Genie, an application designed to prioritize certain types of network traffic over others, and Teaming Genie, which combines network ports into single transmissions (however users will need to add network cards to use this functionality).
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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?