Introduction:



Okay, okay, I admit: I have a little thing for AMD. Is it because the first desktop computer I ever assembled myself was built around an AMD processor, is it because their latest products convince me that they are back on track or is it just the cliché of people cheering for the underdog ... I guess all three. My first AMD Athlon XP dragged me into the hardware enthousiast scene and before I knew it, I was overclocking my XP-mobile 2600+ on water cooling to an astonishing 2,8GHz. I still have an AXP setup lying on my desk, by the way, just in case I ever want to put together liquid nitrogen and old-skool hardware. The second possibility is true as well. Thusfar, I have written three reviews of AMD products and in each of the three reviews I found something interesting about the product I was looking at.

We don’t despair or lose hope though, we need AMD to provide competition and be the other choice for end users. The K10 Phenom is a step in the right direction and as yields get better, at higher speeds it will stand its ground. The model tested today already proved that clock for clock it’s a match to Intel’s latest 45nm CPU.
( ~ Mainstream Quad Core Processors Compared from AMD and Intel)

All in all, I'm surprised in a positive way with the AMD X3 triple core processor. Yes, gaming performance is a little behind, but the difference is very small, games which support multi cores will get a nice boost with the X3, unfortunately the list of games that efficiently support more than 2 cores is very short. Three cores is innovative and in fact a brilliant move from AMD, because Intel is not capable of producing triple cored CPU's as they work with native dualcores (a quadcore = 2 x dualcore glued together).
( ~ AMD Phenom X3: One too little or one too much?)

When I read the first reviews of the HD4850, I instantly noticed how almost every media claimed that this is thé best card in the price/performance ratio class. It's quite obvious actually, because the card performs almost on par with the 9800GTX, in some tests even better, and it's very well priced. This kind of shows which direction AMD has chosen to follow, the direction that made the company as what it is today: not the absolute top product, but nearly unbeatable in the price/performance ratios. AMD already cut prices in the CPU segment, making it possible to buy quad cores at less than €100. To be honest, if you want a good gaming setup, you could consider the Spider platform: a Phenom processor and multiple HD 4000 series cards in Crossfire-X. You'd be amazed about the performance you get.
( ~ ATI HD Radeon 4850 vs NVIDIA Geforce 9800 GTX)

You can probably imagine how happy I was when AMD decided to send me a 790GX motherboard with the new southbridge SB750. In the following pages, you will find my view on the performance of the motherboard, what you can expect in terms of IGP performance and how well the overclocking goes. But first of all, let's have a quick look at the key features of this new chipset.


(2850MHz with an Athlon XP Mobile 2600+ on watercooling)

Foxconn is the trade name of the Taiwan based firm Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers of electronics and computer components worldwide, and mainly manufactures on contract to other companies. Although sometimes referred to as an original equipment manufacturer, Foxconn would be more accurately described as an original design manufacturer. Among other things, Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod and the iPhone for Apple Computer; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel; various orders for American computer retailers Dell, Inc. and Hewlett Packard; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, and Amazon Kindle.

Motherboard pictured:





There is enough place around the socket for easy insulation when you want to deep freeze your AMD Phenom. It doesn't really matter, though, as most Phenom processors have a giant coldbug. Luckily, the X4 9950 on my desk seems to be capable of booting at -35°C.

1 x PS/2 keyboard port

1 x PS/2 mouse port

1 x VGA port

1 x DVI-D port

1 x HDMI port

1 x IEEE1394a port

1 x Audio jack supports 6 jacks

4 x USB 2.0 ports

1 x RJ45 LAN port

2 x PCIe2.0 x16

2 x PCIe2.0 x1

2 x PCI

1 x ATX 24-Pin power connector

1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector

1 x 4-pin ATX 12V power connector

3 x 4-pin CPU / System / NB FAN connectors

1 x Floppy disk drive connector

1 x CD-in connector

1 x Front Audio Header

1 x COM1 header

1 x IrDA header

4 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 8 ports

2 X onboard Power-on/Rest buttons

1 x ATA133 IDE connector

6 x Serial ATAII connectors

1 x Intrusion Alarm header

1 x Front Panel header

1 x S/PDIF Out header

1 x IEEE1394a connector

1 x Speaker





128MB DDR3 1333 Side Port Memory onboard, to elevate the 3D capabilities of the onboard videocard or any videocard added to the system.

Bios pictures



Too bad there's no way to save bios settings; an option which comes in handy when tweaking your system for better performance.

CPU clock: 190 - 400

Memory speed adjust: 200/266/333/400/533

GFX Engine clock override: 150 - 999

PCI Express clock: 90 - 150

CPU Multiplier adjust: x4 - x25

CPU-NB HT Link Speed: x1 - x13

NCHT link width: 8bit/16bit

Advanced Clock Calibration: -12% - +12% in steps of 2% (per core or all cores)

All in all, this feels a bit too little if you really want to get the most out of your Phenom. I'm still missing the option to use other multipliers than x0,5 ones and tweakers really want more Northbridge dividers as well. In addition, there seems to be no option to change the NB and HT link separatly.

CPU voltage control: +0mV - +775mV (in steps of 25mV)

Memory voltage control: +0mV - +600mV (in steps of 50mV)

NB voltage control: +0mV - +300mV (in steps of 30mV)

HT/SB voltage control: +0mV - +360mV (in steps of 30mV)

A very limited amount of voltages.



Set these to enabled if you want to save energy; refer to the power consumption part of this article to find out more.







Extra's

As you might have noticed, I didn't spend time on the extra's that come with the board. Well, the reason behind that is in fact quite simple: this board was send to us by AMD, and not Foxconn, to have us test the 790GX chipset. Therefor, almost nothing additional was sent along with the motherboard and thus is it impossible to show you what comes with the board in retail versions. We have found a little utility on the installation CD which we found quite fun; nothing really fancy, but just nice to show your friends. Have a look at the movie underneath to find out what exactly we found:

Test setup

Madshrimps' AMD Test Setup
CPU	AMD Phenom X4 9850
Cooling	Noctua NH-U12P
Mainboard	MSI K9A2 Platinum v1 Foxconn A7DA-S
Memory	2 * 1GB TeamGroup PC6400
Other	Sparkle Calibre 8600GT 512MB (drivers FW 169.21) Tagan 480W PSU Western Digital 320Gb SATA HDD Windows XP SP3

Methodology

The following benchmarks were used:

SiSoft Sandra 2007: CPU and Memory benchmark

Lavalys Everest: Memory latency

SuperPi 1M

Wprime 32M

Wprime 1024M

PCMark05

TechArp X264 HD benchmark

Cinebench 10

3DMark2001SE

3DMark06

Prey

Crysis

We ran both setups at 2,5 and 3,0GHz to compare. Detailed information here:

Phenom X4 9850 - 200x12,5=2500MHz - 2000MHz (NB) - 533MHz 4-6-6-22 - Unganged

Phenom X4 9850 - 250x12=3000MHz - 2500MHz (NB) - 500MHz 4-4-4-10 - Unganged

Note that, just like in our first Phenom review, we still have problems with applying the correct memory timings in combination with the 533MHz divider. It seems to be random as sometimes when we set 4-4-4-10, we get 4-6-6-22 or 5-6-6-18 or some other combination. This divider was added to give AMD users benefit of extra memory bandwidth, but to be honest, stay clear of this divider if you're tuning your system.

SuperPi and Wprime:

SuperPi has been around for ages now, but still reflects the performance of the technology. Being single threaded, you won't increase performance by inserting a quad core processor, but that's why we've chosen Wprime as an alternative. Wprime has been included in the HWBot benchmark suite for quite some time now and many people agree on the quality of the benchmark. Wprime works with multiple threads and is ideal to test multi-core processors.





Both 790FX and 790GX are performing at pretty much the same level.

Lavalys Everest 4.50

We used the memory benchmark utility to measure the performance of the memory management.



At stock speeds, the bandwidth of the 790GX setup is a bit higher than the bandwidth of the 790FX, in the overclocked test environment, the opposite is true.



Latency-wise, the 790FX is a lot better than the 790GX.

Futuremark benchmarks

These synthetic 3D benchmarks from Futuremark allow you to evaluate the expected performance of a system with different generation games. As each 3DMark uses different feature and quality settings, it allows you to get an idea of how a video card will perform in games. But be aware that since Futuremark takes DirectX guide lines to build their stress tests with all features available, performance can differ from real world games when those games don’t fully support/implement all DX features. So take these results with a grain of salt, and always compare them to our game benchmarks.

3DMark2001SE

The 3rd product in the 3DMark line has been around for ages now and still is used by many people to measure their system's power. Over the years, the benchmark has become more a system benchmark than a pure graphics benchmark.



All in all, the results are quite similar, although we have to mention the 790GX being a tad slower in every configuration.

3DMark06

The last of the DX9 benches in their series is still a graphics card benchmark; however, there's a place for CPU testing as well, as Futuremark developed a CPU test for this benchmark. The more cores, the merrier, so results with four cores will always be better than with two cores.



Very small difference between both chipsets in the 3DMark06 benchmark.

PCMark05

PCMark05 is the last benchmark of the PCMark series which works in Windows XP and it still offers the simplicity of multiple small benchmarks in one. We've selected the most interesting subtest and put the all in one chart.



In nearly every aspect of this benchmark, the 790GX is trailing the 790FX chipset.

Cinebench R10

Cinebench is a benchmark that fully stresses the CPU and measures the raw power of your processing unit by rendering a high-quality image.



Close to no difference here.

TechArp X264 HD benchmark

This benchmark has been introduced to me by Piotke, who used it in his QX9650 review. Using multiple cores it gives us quite a decent view on how fast our setup can encode a short DVD-MPEG2 video clip into an X264 clip. We used the latest HD resolution version of the benchmark to run our tests.



In the video encoding benchmark, the 790GX is again a tad slower than the 790FX chipset.

Prey

Prey uses the venerable game engine from ID software, Tech4 it’s called now, also used for Doom 3 and Quake 4. Prey started development back in 1995, and it took 11 years to see this project come to completion, but when it finally was launched, gamers were pleased with such beautiful graphics, nice story line and original gravity puzzles.



With the help of the HardwareOC Prey benchmark utility, we tested the performance. As we know we're a bit limited when it comes to graphical power, we ran the Prey game in two different test scenarios:

- 640x480, Low detail, no AA or AF: To magnify the difference between both processors
- 1680x1050, low detail, no AA or AF: Is the difference still visible in higher resolutions?



The difference in performance is neglegible in a real 3D application.

790GX IGP: HD 3300 explored

Basicly, there are two important new features introduced with the 790GX chipset: on the one hand we see the new SB750 chipset, which would improve overclocking, and on the other hand we have the new and supposedly better IGP, integrated graphics processor, the HD 3300.

Now, as we did not have other motherboards lying around with IGPs, we decided to use HWBot.org for further comparison. HWBot is a website which features an overall overclocking league for both individuals and teams (Madshrimps currently is the 12th best overclocking team in the world!), which is the main focus at the moment, and also provides a platform to compare the performance of different videocards. The results in the underneath chart are those generated by Hwbot and are based on the average score of all overclocked cards in the particular hardware category. Thus, I uploaded my overclocked HD 3300 results to HWbot and compared the results of all the competitive IGPs. Note that the overclock I used was not extreme; I only used one cooling fan for the CPU.



As you can see, the HD 3300 is the most powerful IGP at the moment, clearly overpowering the Nvidia GeForce IGP series and leaving Intel far behind. It's quite interesting to see that kind of performance from a graphics processor that is integrated in the motherboard. The 'videocard' produces no(!) noise, which would make it ideal for HTPC configurations.

Overclocking

The other key feature on the motherboard is the SB750 chipset, which basicly should improve your Phenom overclock by about 150MHz at least. Why? Because of the option called 'Advanced Clock Calibration'. By choosing a certain percentage, you can either improve performance (negative percentages) or improve overclockability (positive percentages). Now, don't expect to much when you try to improve performance: the gain is not that spectacular. The gain from the positive percentages is, however, quite interesting. For instance, when I was trying to find the maximum stable 24/7 settings of my Phenom system, I ran into boot issues at about 3GHz. However, by setting ACC to +2%, I managed to boot into windows at 3,15GHz without a problem. +4% gives me a rockstable 3.2GHz system, only using 1,408v! Beyond +4% the gain is non-existent and in most cases the system will become even more unstable. If you really want to finetune your overclock, you can set the ACC level of the different cores to a different value. This way, you can undo the possible bottleneck of one unstable core and run your system at a higher frequency. If that doesn't work, you can always downclock one core and overclock the three others! You see, a lot of possible combinations to play with.

Underneath you find a screenshot of one of my best Superpi 1M runs with this setup. Note that this score is done on an unoptimised operating system and that I was only looking for the highest CPU frequency. AOD, Amd Overclocking Device, is a great tool to overclock with, I must say. It's one of the most complete tools I have ever seen and it's quite stable as well!


(clickable)

Note that the HT link still is very limited. 235MHz seems reacheable and fairly stable, but anything beyond that is making the system heavily unstable. In terms of cooling; the Phenom actually benefits quite well from colder situations as the sweetspot seems to be at around +10°C. Increasing the voltage makes the Phenom noticeably hotter, so make sure your cpu cooling is decent enough when overclocking.

Next to that, I have also spent a little time overclocking the HD 3300. I have to say, mine didn't do so well, as I already halted at 750MHz, while most people can do 900MHz. It might just be this motherboard, but it seems that the cliché 'overclocking mostly is luck of the draw' still stands when overclocking integrated GPU's.



The graphics card scales pretty well, in fact, especially when you enable the sideport feature.

Power consumption

Next up, the power consumption. Having in mind that a motherboard with IGP is basicly a dream for the HTPC builders, I wanted to know whether the power consumption could be limited when you downclock you processor. Underneath you find the configuration of my downclock.


(clickable)



The power consumption levels are low for a quad-core system, but if you want an ideal HTPC configuration you might want to downclock a bit; just to make sure you don't waste energy on cpu power that you don't need. For instance, you can downclock three of the four cores to 950MHz and overclock one to 3Ghz. That would make your system a bit faster on single threaded applications and you'll still have four cores doing the background work. The power consumption will be lowered as well as the heatload. I tried running the system fanless, but as it turns out, it's not possible, not even at 950Mhz as the heat keeps rising. A silent fan seems to be the best solution.

Pricing

To have a better view on the pricing ratings, we gathered data from Geizhals.eu (Europe) and Froogle.com (USA) and averaged out the prices.



The 790GX is price-wise a good choice, especially when you consider the improvements over the 790FX (with SB600). The future will tell us if manufacturers are able to produce better overclocking 790FX chipsets (with SB750) and if the price difference is worth it. I looked up the price ratings of the 8300 IGP based motherboards and yes, those are a lot cheaper, some even 50%. But, the overclockability is less good and the IGP is worth much less than the HD 3300, so in my opinion, the 790GX still is worth the money more.

Evaluation

AMD's 790GX/SB750

In the past, I've always been very optimistic about the AMD product releases, but this time I'm not entirely convinced. Yes, the IGP is very handy for HTPC's and yes, the 3D performance is the best we've seen yet of an IGP, but in the newest games, you will have to downgrade the resolution and eye-candy to get a playable game. The HD 3300 is good for those who play games just for fun and have no interest in image quality and although I personnaly don't mind playing at lower resolutions, I do mind having to use a resolution of 800x600 or even worse. When I have the time, I will try to find a good overclocking 790GX motherboard and see if overclocking the IGP to a core speed of 900+MHz helps or not.

+ IGP ideal for HTPC
+ Silent
+ ACC seems to help in overclocking
- Lack of 3D performance
- More overclocking settings wanted
- The 533MHz divider still has some issues

Conclusive thoughts

The 790FX/SB600 chipset combination was next in line to be refreshed and AMD did do a good job, however instead of providing motherboards with a load of overclocking and tweaking features, like we see on Intel platforms, we can only find the basic tuning options. People blaim AMD for this, but in fact it's because the manufacturers spend less time and less engineers on these motherboards as the Intel market is at the moment the most lucrative market. AMD has already asked to make the bios more oc-friendly by giving all the tuning options, but most manufacturers don't listen. Instead, they choose for an 'easy' design method and finish off the bios as fast as possible, leaving out tuning options such as elaborate multipliers and independant NB and HT link multipliers.

If you want to build a decent HTPC and are not afraid to spend time finding the ideal balance between multi-core processing power, frequencies and power consumption, the 790GX is a very good choice. The built-in IGP provides enough power for basic 3D applications and is completely silent.

To end with, I'm looking forward to the motherboards that are still to be released and hopefully, we'll see much better overclocks in the future. I cannot wait for the Deneb 45nm Phenom processors of which a lot of rumours are already spread out. Some say better overclocking, some say ready to take on Intel's Nehalem ... all I know is that I want to test one as soon as possible.

Thanks to Steeve from AMD for sending us the Foxconn A7DA-S. 'Till the next time!