A Trio of AMD 890GX Boards - More Mainstream AMD Madness

More AMD 890GX Motherboards

In our introducing the new AMD 890GX chipset, we looked at the major changes from the older 790GX. The new Southbridge was the highlight, bringing native SATA 6Gbit/s support while the integrated graphics got a minor boost, mostly in the standards and compatibility aspect. Enthusiasts however, found that AMD has removed from the 890GX the Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) feature that allowed users to unlock AMD processors on the 790GX.

While our initial article featured a microATX board and a normal ATX-sized board from MSI and Gigabyte, we are returning to the 890GX scene with three more ATX boards, from ASUS, ECS and Jetway. Interestingly, the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 touts a hardware Core Unlocker feature that apparently allows for hassle-free unlocking of the AMD CPU's cores with a flick of a switch. That immediately piqued our interest, but before we explore the ASUS board, here's a comparison of the three boards featured today.

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3

After all the hype about ASUS' Core Unlocker feature on the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, the actual physical implementation is nothing too exciting - a simple switch on the PCB that will unlock the 'latent potential' of your AMD processor. You won't even need to go into the BIOS after the reboot. Of course, it only works on processors with 'extra' cores hidden away, like the Phenom II X2. The Turbo Key beside it will then help you auto-overclock the processor. It's certainly a draw for those who are intrigued by the unlocking and overclocking but are hesitant about trying it themselves through BIOS tinkering. From our own with unlocking the AMD Phenom II X2, it's perhaps a good thing from ASUS.

Now that we established that the Core Unlocker works as advertised, let's look at the entire board. There's only one word for it - schizophrenic. Our reason is this: despite a number of useful, modern features, it does have some throwbacks to an older era, when jumpers and switch cards were necessary. It makes us wonder whether a committee designed this board or if cost measures ultimately delivered this mix of old and new. Let's get to that in a bit.

You should know that there are quite a few of ASUS' own internal technologies on this board. Check the product webpage or manual for the full list, though we think that you have probably heard of them, like ExpressGate, EZ Flash, etc. Most are not that new and are at least a few iterations old but there is always the rare gem, like the Core Unlocker that's unique.

There's nothing to criticize on the rear interface; more so with ASUS the only board in our trio of AMD 890GX boards to include USB 3.0 support via the usual NEC controller. These blue USB ports are clearly marked and besides this option, one can choose between eSATA and FireWire if your external devices are of that orientation. Without a PS/2 mouse port, we would have welcomed a few more USB ports but it's not too important. There's only space for one optical S/PDIF output; the onboard audio HD CODEC is as usual from Realtek, though it's a relatively new ALC892 that yielded too little information about its specifications on the web. What we managed to find is that the new Realtek chip adds loseless multi-channel CODEC support like Dolby True HD and DTS HD. 

The layout of this board is excellent. Like the SATA ports above, care has been taken to ensure that all the ports and connectors are not blocked or interfering with any other devices. Ample space between the various components onboard makes installation of devices a breeze. 

Here's the part we aren't fans of - the use of jumpers for clearing the CMOS. As you can tell, it's a bit too close to the neighbouring connectors. Where's the Clear CMOS switch at the rear I/O or even on the PCB? That's what we have been used to from other brands after all; don't blame us from expecting the same from ASUS. 

Another 'feature' that appropriately justifies our 'schizo' tag for this ASUS board is the VGA switch card that's required if you only have a single graphics card installed. To get the full x16 bandwidth, you'll need to have the switch card installed as shown below. And we always thought that it's done 'automatically' by motherboards nowadays. It's something we have seen from other vendors, but the last instance was a , and the last thing we expected was to find it on an ASUS board. 

To sum up our impressions so far, the ASUS M489GTD PRO/USB3 probably has some of the more advanced features on a AMD 890GX motherboard, from having USB 3.0 support to its own Core Unlocker feature. Integrated graphics with SidePort memory is a given. It's got FireWire and eSATA  along with IDE support for those who have a variety of storage devices. A mostly great layout and quality components seem to make it a top contender for this chipset, but ASUS' decision to go with some rather archaic methods of implementing certain features do give us pause. At least it's an interesting board and the quirks should have no detrimental effect on its performance and usability.

ECS A890GXM-A

ECS may not have the market brand recognition as ASUS but the company offers decent boards at reasonable prices and while it may lack some of the perks of the bigger brands, there's nothing wrong with being simply functional. The A890GXM-A, part of ECS' Black Series, shows a definite hint of polish. Touches that we often associate with the more popular brands, like onboard power/reset buttons, solid capacitors, Clear CMOS button, etc. are on this board. Yes, it would appear that the A890GXM-A is a board that would fare competitively against the bigger manufacturers. 

So what does ECS bring to the table? In terms of features, the A890GXM-A is rather standard, with five SATA 6Gbps ports and an eSATA at the rear. Legacy interfaces like floppy and PATA are not present, which leaves ECS with more than adequate PCB space to hone its board layout. There's no USB 3.0 functionality like the ASUS, but they both use identical Realtek HD audio CODEC, the ALC892.

ECS has chosen to go with dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers, a surprising move just like its addition of a DisplayPort. It certainly breaks up the monotony for us but we aren't too sold on the dual Gigabit part personally. DisplayPort however is much welcomed, though the choice of screens/displays that support it is still criminally limited. Just like the ASUS, the integrated graphics engiine come with 128MB of SidePort memory, but unlike it, there are no options in the BIOS to adjust the integrated graphics settings, which is a shame. 

With a solid, chunky looking heatsink, solid capacitors all round and a layout that we just couldn't find any flaw with, it seems that ECS has produced a very competent looking AMD 890GX board. We'll know better later after the benchmarks if it performs up to its specs, but from a usability point of view, there appears to be no major issues here. It may lack some features like IDE but it's balanced by some perks found on more expensive boards. While the hardware looks very decent indeed, the BIOS still lacks the polish and options we have come to expect from brands like ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI.

Jetway HA09

To appreciate the progress we have seen from ECS over the years in improving its motherboards, one only has to look at the Jetway HA09. It's an ambitious board, with interesting features but some glaring issues detract from its appeal. In short, Jetway isn't there yet and while it may have aspirations, we aren't prepared to be beta testers.

That's not to say it's a bad board, at least not outright from the specifications. It has the standard AMD 890GX features, like SATA 6Gbps ports (though no USB 3.0 support) and integrated graphics. In fact, it's better than the ECS in this department, as its BIOS allows users to tweak the clock speed of the SidePort memory and the graphics core. CrossFireX is supported, with two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots that can cater to dual-slot graphics cards. Jetway even tries to live up to the quality and usability demanded by enthusiasts with solid capacitors, clear CMOS, power and reset buttons and even LEDs for debugging. 

This is when it hit us that the Jetway HA09 will not meet our expectations; and it's a case of the board layout. No doubt, Jetway overextended itself by trying to pack in both floppy and IDE support, but we would like to ask if anyone at Jetway even tested this board with a dual-slot graphics card. We were not using a top end graphics card, but an old GeForce 9800 GTX. Once you install the card, you'll see that your power button gets completely covered by the graphics card. It took us quite a while to find the power button as a result. The nearby SATA 6Gbps ports are also affected by the graphics card, and we could only use two of them properly. It is quite simply, an atrocious design that negates much of what Jetway has done right. 

Fortunately, the rest of the board did not incur further wrath, at least not from the layout perspective. Jetway was able to locate most of its connectors (USB, floppy, etc) at the edge of the board, which is ideal. Even the Clear CMOS button was relatively accessible, despite its proximity to the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. The feature list is something that Jetway has done well to cover and the debug LED, with proper documentation in the manual, should come in handy. Jetway even has a Green Power Indicator, which are LEDs that light up to show that its power saving function is working.

Our only other layout grouse is that the internal eSATA connector (in yellow) is located in a rather cramped area behind the CPU heatsink and it could be difficult plugging it in/out. That's not the end however, as the DIMM slots surprisingly is capped at a maximum memory capacity of 8GB. This is half that of the usual 16GB on the other AMD 890GX boards and those who require more memory (or even those with a single 4GB memory module) will find the Jetway unsuitable. 

This mini PCIe slot is probably something that you won't find on other AMD 890GX boards and while interesting, it requires users to find a suitable module to utilize it fully. Since the space would likely be taken up by a PCIe x1 slot if it wasn't there, we don't mind the addition of this niche feature. 

BIOS Settings

Not surprisingly, the big name in this roundup, ASUS, had the best BIOS among them, with extensive options to tweak, profiles to automatically give your system an overclocked boost and utilities like EZ Flash. There were glimpses of additional BIOS tweaks on the other two boards but for the most part, their BIOSes were functional and workman-like rather than catering to the enthusiast segment. ECS surprisingly lacked any settings to tweak the integrated graphics core and memory, unlike most AMD 890GX boards we had tested. When it came to the overclocking aspect, the ASUS was the clear winner, with the other two barely able to get much mileage from the default 200MHz base clock.  

Test Setup

Since we have covered the integrated graphics performance of the AMD 890GX chipset previously, we won't be looking into this again. Instead, we'll be running through our motherboard benchmarks only. The platform remains similar and is listed below. For comparison, we have added the results of the two tested AMD 890GX boards (Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H and MSI 890GXM-G65) in our following results segment.

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz)
• 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @7-7-7-20
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA HDD (single NTFS partition of 200GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB (ForceWare 195.62)
• Windows 7 Ultimate

The following benchmarks were used:

• BAPCo SYSmark 2007 Preview (ver 1.05)
• Futuremark PCMark Vantage (ver 1.0.3.1)
• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage (ver 1.0.3.1)
• SPECviewperf 9.0
• Far Cry 2

Results - SYSmark 2007 Preview

The ASUS and ECS were the better overall performers in SYSmark 2007, with the Jetway in the middle of the pack of AMD 890GX boards. The differences were rather minor, with the ASUS edging ahead by around 3% more than the Jetway. The breakdown illustrated this further, with the ASUS only marginally in front of the competition for most segments. 

Results - Futuremark PCMark Vantage

The three boards performed very similarly in PCMark Vantage. Most of the variation was in the Memories segment, where the ECS board emerged as the faster of the trio, when it came to handling digital media. The hard disk, video encoding and productivity performance were almost identical for all the 890GX boards, since these are likely to depend heavily on the processor and hard drive. 

Results - SPECviewperf 9.0

Despite repeated runs, the results we got for SPECviewperf 9.0 varied substantially. This meant that it was difficult to get a clear picture of which board fared better as ASUS and ECS had contrasting fortunes in both runs. The only conclusion that we could gather was that the Gigabyte board was the consistent and best performer here. 

Results - Futuremark 3DMark Vantage & Far Cry 2

The ECS board managed to streak ahead of the other boards by a slight 2% in 3DMark Vantage. The rest of the other boards were closely matched here and this was also seen in Far Cry 2, where the scores differed by a frame or less. 

Temperature

Generally, the Southbridge is relatively cool across all the AMD 890GX boards and even with tiny passive heatsinks, they end up near the 40 degrees Celsius mark for all these motherboards. 

Power Consumption

One of the perks for getting a more costly motherboard from a bigger brand is its attention to detail to things like power consumption. While the Jetway boasts of Green Power indicator LEDs, its power consumption did not stand out, especially when the ASUS board was the front runner with lower idle and peak power consumption results. The MSI microATX board had the lowest idle power numbers but it shouldn't be a valid consideration due to its form factor and lower component count.

Conclusion

The launch of AMD's 6-core processor, Thuban, is very close now, so for those who have been lurking and deciding when to upgrade your systems, the time could be soon. All these AMD 890GX boards will support Thuban and so will the upcoming AMD 890FX , the enthusiast oriented chipset. Those who would like the option of integrated graphics as a fallback, or just because they don't require 3-way CrossFireX will find the 890GX a suitable candidate. As we found out today, the brands offering this chipset are increasing, with some very interesting designs.

The most high profile and favorite in this roundup is the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3. The new Core Unlocker feature will be a big selling point, especially since we haven't seen anything comparable from its rivals. The layout is the best among the three and perhaps the best of all the 890GX boards we have tested personally. The presence of USB 3.0 also makes it a more future-proof choice. It has its quirks however, with the choice of a graphics switch card and CMOS clear jumper among a few others that's quite jarring considering the board is from a top tier brand. Perhaps cost is the main reason for such decisions, but at US$145, it's not as expensive as you may think. Overclocking, power consumption and temperature results also point to ASUS as having the edge.

A caveat for locals - the ASUS is retailing at S$315 here, which is at least S$100 more than its equivalent US retail price. Given this price, we'll have to give it a miss; Gigabyte's GA-890GPA-UD3H goes for around S$230 and all you'll really miss is the Core Unlocker function. In fact, you can probably get the proper, quad-core processor with the price difference instead of relying on unlocking.

29th April Update - We just got word from ASUS that they have revised their SG pricing for the M489GTD PRO/USB3 to S$249, which definitely makes it more competitive against the other brands, especially with the Core Unlocker feature included. This price update will take effect next week, so those who have been taken aback by the initial price can reconsider their decisions now.

Meanwhile, the ECS A890GXM-A is a very decent board which even performed slightly above its rivals in our benchmarks. It may not have that many features but at US$120, it's priced accordingly. ECS has managed to get the hardware and layout polished to a certain extent, but there is still work on the software side, with its BIOS found lacking. If a functional and standard AMD 890GX board is all you crave, then the ECS does a reasonably fine job.

Finally, the Jetway HA09 showed much promise that was ultimately derailed by layout issues. There is no point in putting all those nice features on the board if the user is unable to use them fully due to the layout. That's something that Jetway needs to get right before they experiment with interesting additions like the mini PCIe slot. While the board overall performed competitively in our benchmarks, the limitation on its memory capacity (8GB) and the lesser options in the BIOS mean that enthusiasts are unlikely to find it appealing. At US$130, it cost more than the ECS, though it's probably justified going by the feature list solely. Unfortunately, it would also take a huge discount to entice us to get this board, with its appalling layout of the SATA ports, unless you're only going to use its integrated graphics. 

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