AMD 990FX Preview - Waiting for Bulldozer
AMD's hopes for the desktop market are in the hands of its upcoming next-gen CPU architecture, codenamed Bulldozer. While speculation continues over whether the new processors will be delayed, the supporting motherboards are coming out as scheduled. Here's our preview of three AMD 990FX boards from ASUS, ECS and MSI.
Waiting for Bulldozer
AMD scored some early design wins when its first Fusion product, Brazos, . While the performance and more importantly, the competitive power draw of Brazos give us hope that the more powerful Llano will be a good alternative to Intel's Sandy Bridge processors, these are not the processors that AMD enthusiasts have been waiting for.
What they have been eagerly awaiting, (evident from the endless speculation that takes up most of 35 pages on our forums), is none other than the next-gen CPU architecture from AMD, codenamed Bulldozer. To be built by GlobalFoundries using its 32nm SOI process technology, Bulldozer carries AMD's hope of getting back on level terms with Intel on the processor front. Although the mobile arena has become more important these days, the desktop and server markets still remain very significant and it's where AMD has been finding it extremely difficult to compete, especially in the mid-range and higher end segments.
Intel has shown with its that it's not resting on its laurels, so there is a lot riding on AMD's next move. Bulldozer and its followups have to achieve a certain level of competitiveness with Intel's current . With up to eight-core CPU variants in the upcoming Bulldozer lineup - the FX-Series (or Zambezi) will be released first - we certainly hope so.
In the meantime, AMD is laying the ground for the FX-Series, with its latest AMD 9-series chipsets slated to be launched next week at Computex Taipei. We have received some AMD 990FX motherboards, the top chipset SKU in the series, which also includes the AMD 990X, 980G and 970, mirroring the chipset variants in the 8-series.
The enthusiast-oriented AMD 990FX remains a two-chip solution, with a Northbridge 990FX and a Southbridge (SB950). All come with a new Socket AM3b that will support the new FX-Series processors, though this socket is also backwards compatible with existing AM3 processors, hence the AM3+ nomenclature. We'll share more details on the what the new socket enhances over the current AM3 socket closer to the availability of the new processors.
On paper, the 9-series chipsets appear almost identical to the 8-series. There's still no native USB 3.0 support, but AMD does have a full complement of six SATA 6Gbps ports from the Southbridge, unlike the two on Intel's. And for the enthusiasts, there's also good news in the form of official NVIDIA SLI support on the 9-series. You'll also find support for a higher DDR3 memory frequency on the Bulldozer platform, with DDR3-1866MHz now officially mandated. It is also likely that the new boards also support a faster HyperTransport bus for the new FX-series processors.
Overall, there aren't any significant changes for these chipsets, though we don't yet know if there have been improvements in performance (especially for the storage aspect), but let's take a look at how the board manufacturers have implemented the AMD 990FX:
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
We have seen other Sabertooth boards from ASUS that belong to its TUF (or The Ultimate Force according to the usual bombastic marketing blurb) series and the 990FX here is no different. This means the use of military-class components in the form of its chokes, capacitors and MOSFETs and of course, the distinctive and rough to the touch ceramic based heatsinks. According to ASUS, the textured, ceramic based heatsink is better at dissipating heat as its irregular surface leads to a greater overall surface area.
In any case, the Sabertooth 990FX is not as extreme as , which has a layer of plastic or 'thermal armor' over the PCB in an attempt to direct casing airflow in the best possible way. This is in short, a typical TUF board, down to its rugged appearance.
ASUS' Sabertooth belongs to its line of 'thermal armored' TUF boards and it has the same color scheme as the others, with a 'dirty' green and brown look. Of course you could also view them as colors more associated with the military, which is where the TUF series draws its inspiration from.
The first thing we noticed is the lack of a Clear CMOS button at the rear panel. No doubt, there are many USB ports, up to 10 USB 2.0 along with the two blue USB 3.0 ports. But we would have preferred a Clear CMOS switch here as well.
Once you look past the TUF features, it's evident that this is not ASUS' ultimate SKU for the AMD 990FX chipset. For one, we don't find onboard power or reset buttons and the lack of a rear Clear CMOS button certainly bothers us. That's not to say that this board is lacking in features, for besides the chipset's default six SATA 6Gbps ports, there are two Marvell controllers to add more SATA goodness - two SATA 3Gbps ports onboard and two eSATA 3Gbps ports at the rear.
While the specifications for this board claim Quad-GPU SLI and CrossFireX support, do note that the feasible way is to have a pair of graphics cards with dual-GPUs, like a Radeon HD 6990. This is because the positioning of the four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots are such that it's impossible to fit four dual-slot graphics cards (which make up the majority of the cards that are worth running a multi-GPU config). Additionally, one of these slots only has x4 bandwidth, making it unsuitable for high-end multi-GPU setups. In short, running a dual-card setup is the most reasonable option for most people as well as what's best on this board.
AMD's SB950 provide the same number of SATA 6Gbps ports as its predecessor, the SB850. ASUS has added two more SATA 3Gbps ports via a JMicron controller.
One of the few changes that we noticed with AMD's latest chipset is that it now officially supports up to DDR3 1866, though 32GB of RAM remains the maximum and it's still a dual-channel memory architecture by virtue of the CPU limitation.
ASUS' MemOK! feature has been around for a while. Some users may find it useful for those occasions when they get their memory settings wrong or a lemon of a memory module.
All the heatsinks, including this on the Southbridge, have ceramic origins and the surfaces feel rough.
Another sign that the Sabertooth is not ASUS' top board in this category is the lack of onboard power and reset buttons. Instead, you'll find the usual front panel connectors and an old-school jumper to reset the BIOS.
There are four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots here, but we recommend only filling three of them in a x16/x8/x8 auto-configuration. The fourth slot (in black and sandwiched in between) has a limited PCIe bandwidth of x4, making it less than suitable for multi-GPU setups.
The new AM3b slot that supports the new AM3+ processors. We were quite surprised to see that ASUS has taken out two sides of the heatsink mounting bracket surrounding the socket, but we suppose this was due to the lack of space. It certainly doesn't look like there is that much allowance for larger third-party coolers.
Some of the onboard controllers on this Sabertooth include a VIA controller for two FireWire ports, a pair of JMicron controllers for eSATA and SATA 3Gbps ports and not forgetting two USB 3.0 controllers from ASMedia. If you ask us, we're not sure why FireWire is still being supported on new boards given the popularity of USB devices.
You can just about make out the rough, textured nature of the ceramic heatsink here. As ASUS claims, that's more surface area to dissipate heat.
You'll also get a UEFI BIOS to go along with the usual barrage of proprietary features and technologies that ASUS and its other motherboard brethren like to tout. Given what we have seen of , it should be equally user-friendly as the ones we tried on its P67 and Z68 boards. Together with the decent layout, this ASUS Sabertooth 990FX looks like it will maintain ASUS' high standards, though we're also expecting a slight premium for its military-grade components, as usual.
ECS A990FXM-A
ECS has harbored ambitions of breaking into the top ranks of motherboard manufacturers and its enthusiast series, the Black Extreme, has often been close to achieving it with its numerous high-end features and impeccable hardware. It's just that so far, the software and the BIOS have not matched its improvements in hardware and the A990FXM-A looks to follow in a similar vein.
First, the hardware. A massive heatsink, albeit low-profile, at the CPU socket area, with heatpipes running through that caught our attention, along with a nice, polished 'Black' series logo on the Southbridge heatsink. And then there's the IDE port. Yes, ECS has thrown in a curveball with its support of this legacy interface. Meanwhile, we also find a Bluetooth module onboard, something that we had previously only seen on ASUS boards.
At a glance, this ECS board does little wrong with the layout; it helps that it only has three PCIe 2.0 x16 slots compared to the four we have seen on other boards. Then again, three is a realistic number considering the PCIe bandwidth available. Besides, the three on the ECS board are spaced exactly to support dual-slot graphics cards.
ECS' Black Extreme series has a new member now in the form of the A990FXM-A.
We have seen Bluetooth support on ASUS motherboards recently and now ECS too has that feature. There's just barely space here for all the connectors, especially with dual Gigabit LAN but ECS makes it work by not having FireWire support like the ASUS and MSI boards.
Another surprise was in store for us as we spotted an IDE port right besides the six SATA 6Gbps ports. Now this is something that you don't see too often nowadays.
There were no surprises here at the DDR3 DIMM slots, with the standard 4 DIMM, dual-channel configuration. ECS also added a debug LED for POST messages at the bottom here.
Again, we have come to take onboard power and reset buttons for granted. Thankfully they are found on this board.
With just three PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, 3-way SLI or CrossFireX is the best you can get on the ECS. The slots are spaced out sufficiently to support dual-slot graphics cards.
As the printing on the PCB says, there are two Gigabit LAN controllers on board, along with a USB 3.0 controller from ASMedia (an ASUS subsidiary interestingly) and the ubiquitous Realtek audio chip.
Like the ASUS, the Socket AM3b on the ECS board has an 'open' feel to it.
A small but thoughtful touch here from ECS to raise the ATX power connector to make it easier for bigger, clumsy fingers that may find a depressed connector too hard to reach.
As for the BIOS, it's from American Megatrends and identical to what we have seen on . While it's responsive enough, it's not one where you can use your mouse or with fancy graphical elements. Overall, we don't agree with some of ECS' choices here, but there's little to criticize the implementation, at least in terms of hardware quality and the layout. If the price is right, this board could be excellent value.
MSI 990FXA-GD80
We have certainly seen quite a number of MSI's 'GD80' models over the years for various chipsets and with the exception of the occasional GD85 and of course, its Big-Bang series, the GD80 represents a pretty high-end member of MSI's lineup. Hence, there's a certain level of expectations about what we'll find on the MSI 990FXA-GD80, as it's an enthusiast class board for an enthusiast level chipset.
In terms of hardware, we weren't disappointed. MSI may have more extreme boards with hardcore overclocking features than this GD80, but with its latest incarnation of MSI's Military Class feature and practical blend of features, this is definitely an upper mid-range board. Like the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX, it comes with four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, but effectively, only three can be effectively used by consumers.
MSI does not add more SATA ports with more controllers, but you'll get your JMicron fix with two eSATA ports at the rear. There is just a single Gigabit LAN port, which shows again that this is not the flagship 990FX from MSI, even if we think two is too many. VIA provides FireWire support, which we suppose is expected for this segment; we are just not fans of the interface when USB 3.0 available. FireWire still has its uses, but only to the video editing folks who have camcorders to support that output.
MSI's GD80 has come to represent a certain class of features from the manufacturer and this AMD 990FX version stays true to that.
A good mix of ports and connectors here, with MSI keeping with PS/2 ports along with a very useful Clear CMOS button. It does mean that there aren't that many USB 2.0 ports here compared to the ASUS Sabertooth but it's a decent compromise.
The standard six SATA 6Gbps ports from the AMD Southbridge along with a USB 3.0 connector to link to a front USB 3.0 panel provided by MSI.
Four DIMM slots that support up to DDR3 2100 (O.C) memory modules.
The OC Genie button here will automatically overclock the CPU, though from our experience, it's a relatively mild amount that veteran users shouldn't bother with.
This rather flat heatsink for the Southbridge is one that we have seen on other MSI boards. There's also a debug LED with the codes listed in the manual.
Like the ASUS Sabertooth, the MSI 990FXA-GD80 may come with four PCIe x16 slots but it's only good for three. Unless, for some reason, you plan to CrossFireX four mainstream, single-slot graphics cards that is.
In case you needed reminding of MSI's OC Genie feature. We liked that the heatsink here used heatpipes and is low-profile enough not to interfere with neighboring components.
NEC or rather Renesas still provides the USB 3.0 functionality on this MSI board.
Compared to the Sabertooth, there appears to be slightly more room around the CPU socket on this board.
Some of the 'Military Class' components onboard can be seen here, like these 'Super Ferrite Chokes' which promise longer average lifespans.
With decently low-profile heatsinks, a clean layout and onboard buttons, including the all-important Clear CMOS at the rear, this MSI board gets things right. We can't tell how it'll perform but with the quality of the components, it should be more than decent.
For those of you who have tried and hated interface, the return of a plain, generic BIOS (from American Megatrends like the ECS board) is a huge relief. Since we haven't yet tried it ourselves, aside from glancing at the manual, we will hold our judgment for now, but we believe that it's a good move.
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