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 ESTUSB Speed
For this benchmark, we run CrystalDiskMark to determine the ideal sequential read and write speeds for the USB port using our 64GB Patriot SuperSpeed USB 3.0 drive. Then we transfer a set size of files from the SSD to the USB drive, and monitor the time taken to transfer. The files transferred are a 1.52 GB set of 2867 files across 320 folders – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are the videos used in the Sorenson Squeeze test.
A lot of how the system deals with USB interactions is based on the hardware, including BIOS stated priorities, but also on the software and drivers supplied. This results in our spread on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 speeds/times. On the whole the Sabertooth 990FX is a good performer, while the MSI tends to lag behind in real world testing.
SATA Testing
We also use CrystalDiskMark for SATA port testing. The operating system is installed on the SSD, and the sequential test is run at the 5 x 1000 MB level. This test probes the efficiency of the data delivery system between the chipset and the drive, or in the case of additional SATA ports provided by a third party controller, the efficiency between the controller, the chipset and the drive.
For SATA testing, again we get a processor independent spread. The interesting thing here is the SATA 6 Write results, in which the ASUS boards clearly have an advantage over the other products. This is most likely due to more agressive BIOS settings at default.
DPC Latency
Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests, such as audio, will be further down the line. So if the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled. If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time, resulting in an empty audio buffer – this leads to characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. Having a bigger buffer and correctly implemented system drivers obviously helps in this regard. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is processing DPCs from driver invocation – the lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds and taken as the peak latency while cycling through a series of short HD videos - less than 500 microseconds usually gets the green light, but the lower the better.
DPC Latency always shows the biggest differences between our motherboards. It is hampered by the fact that it can be disturbed by software. In particular, ASUS' AI Suite and Gigabyte's EasyTune software, when installed, initialise themselves on startup and continuously monitor the motherboard sensors (by pinging them every 3-5 seconds). This request for data has a higher priority, and thus when we do our DPC checks, those boards when the software is enabled shoot up to 3000 microseconds or more. For these tests, we disable the software (as it shows uncharacteristic spikes) to take a reading while playing HD video. In this case, we can confirm that ASUS do it best, and you get what you pay for with respect to the Biostar motherboard.
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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?