Some really like the colors that GIGABYTE typically uses, some don't. Personally, colors always take a back seat to the performance I like and the features I need. The GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 is packed with features that will meet most users' needs. With over twenty years of manufacturing experience, GIGABYTE has built a reputation for bringing quality products to the table. With a bit of luck the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 will be no different. Just a few short weeks ago I took a look at another GIGABYTE board, the GIGABYTE 880GMA-UD2H. That board, for the most, part blew my mind especially when you consider that it is a sub $100 board. The GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 is a more expensive board, although it is also the top tier GIGABYTE ATX AMD motherboard. At $179.99 it is the fourth least expensive board in the AMD 890FX series (or the fifth most expensive).
Despite having a lower cost than several of the AMD 890FX boards out there, the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 has no shortage of features. As you undoubtedly discerned by now, the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 motherboard is based around the AMD 890FX+SB850 chipset. Currently this chipset is the cream of the crop chipset for enthusiasts.
AMD 890FX Chipset
AMD's 890FX chipset has a couple of significant differences when compared to the 890GX chipset. The first and most obvious on the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 is the lack of onboard graphics while the 890GX features the Radeon HD 4290 integrated graphics. The second and quite possibly the most important to the enthusiast looking for the best performance from the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 when running in CrossfireX is the number of PCI Express lanes. The 890GX chipset is limited to 16 lanes while the 890FX chipset has double that at 32 lanes. Most people will most likely never notice a difference unless, of course, you are one of the lucky ones that can afford a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5970's or one of the insane ones who is lucky enough to pick up a pair of the ASUS ARES. Another significant difference is the IOMMU (input/output memory management unit). This is a feature that is typically available only on server boards, although is included in the 890FX chipset only when comparing the 8xx series chipsets. According to AMD: The IOMMU (input/output memory management unit) included with the 890FX chipset is a function of a chipset that enables enhancements to system-level software and that prevents illegal access of memory by I/O devices. By preventing illegal access of memory, the IOMMU can prevent problems with latency. An IOMMU can map device memory addresses to physical memory addresses, but in a manner that is transparent to the device hardware. The IOMMU automates the translation between the physical address of the I/O device and the host system.
ECS has never been shy about releasing a new board based on a new chipset or new technology. They seem to always be right there knocking at the door of the latest and greatest that is released and they usually do it at a better price than many others. They may not have always performed quite as fast or overclocked quite as well as some other boards on the market, but they have usually been close and always priced a bit better.
Today, we take a look at the ECS A890GXM-A, a new board based on the 890GX chipset from AMD. This board is part of the Black Series of motherboards from ECS, which means that it is a board that is geared more to the performance and overclocking end for enthusiasts. The Black series seems to have done very well, and we expect to see some great results as we test this board today. If you missed our introduction of the 890GX chipset, you can go back and read Nate's article on it and see the results that he gets from a couple of other 890GX boards. For now, let's start by looking at the specs of the board:
ECS also has several features with this board that are supposed to make the user experience that much better. eJiffy is a way of fast booting into a Linux environment to get connected to the internet quicker. We have looked at other similar features from other board makers, and I am not too sure that this is really that useful of a feature for most, but someone may like it.
They also have what they called eBLU (BIOS Live Update), which is a very useful tool to quickly and easily update your BIOS online through ECS servers.
One last thing worth mentioning is the M.I.B. III program which is an overclocking aide for those that need it. This program is supposed to help you get every ounce of performance from your motherboard.
It feels like it has been a solid half year since I previewed the ASUS Rampage III Extreme. Turns out that feeling was spot on as by the time this article goes live it'll have been six months and a few days since the preview. So, I'm sure there are a few important questions on everyone's mind like what has changed since the engineering sample preview, what did I eat for breakfast today, and what took so long?
The first question is the meat and potatoes of this article so I'm going to dodge it by talking about my breakfast. It was delicious. That is all. Regarding the third question it was all an issue of shifting priorities. For this review I decided to break the mold of a traditional review here on Legit Reviews and go back to strictly overclocking for fun in order to see what the board could really do when pushed to the limits. After seeing Nathan twice, once at Gigabyte's GO OC (that was my rig running the Kingston HyperX sub-zero!) and then again at QuakeCon, I was reminded that I still had to actually review the Rampage III Extreme even though I had been playing with it for months. So, with all the blubbering completed let's dive head first into ASUS' flagship motherboard, the Rampage III Extreme!
For those unfamiliar with the ASUS Republic of Gamers line of products I'd highly encourage opening up a new tab and glancing over the current products. ROG was created in 2006 to produce a premium line of products designed to maximize the gaming experience. The first ROG product I remember was the ASUS P965 Commando and since then ROG has released many a fine motherboard like the venerable Rampage Extreme and the shockingly powerful GTX 295 MARS.
Like all Rampage Extremes of the past, the Rampage III Extreme is no different in that it brings premium performance to the table. Complete with an overbuilt CPU and QPI PWM, high throughput connectivity like USB3/SATA6, a dedicated 1GbE Intel NIC, and a mountain of software support, the Rampage III Extreme feels like a Rampage II Extreme on steroids. Now with that 30 second elevator speech out of the way let's take a closer look at what you actually receive when purchasing a Rampage III Extreme.
We got a nice little surprise here at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2010 when Intel pulled out their upcoming LGA1155 6-series chipset Sandy Bridge motherboard! This Intel P67 board is called 'Burrage' internally, but you'll know if by the retail part number of DP67BG. The Intel DP67BG is the very first Intel LGA1155 motherboard that we have seen in person and while we don't know the specifics on the board we were able to snap some pictures of the board.
Along the bottom edge we can make out three internal USB 2.0 headers in black and a single Firewire 1394a header in blue. If we are counting right it looks like this board will have 14 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 headers. Six USB 2.0 headers are internal USB 2.0 and eight are external. The pair of Super Speed USB 3.0 headers are external. We can make out three PCIe x1 slots, two PCIe x16 slots and two PCI slots on the board. It looks like NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire multi-GPU setups will be supported on the board if licensing agreements are agreed to between the companies.
The Intel DP67BG 'Burrage' motherboard has a very clean look to it and looks like it will be an enthusiast mainboard as it is black, has power and reset buttons and an LED post indicator on the board.
Intel has stuck with the skull that lights up on the bottom corner of the motherboard, which is a nice touch. Intel allows you to turn off and on the lights for the skull in the BIOS, so no worries if that isn't your thing. The DP67BG motherboard has six internal SATA headers and we are guessing the four black ones are SATA II 3.0Gbps and the two blue headers are for SATA III 6.0Gbps devices.
Here is a closer look at the LGA1155 socket and the two sets of dual-channel DDR3 memory slots. You can also make out the 24-pin ATX power connector and 8-pin +12V power connector just above the CPU socket. Nothing too special here and you can see the board uses all solid-state capacitors.
The rear input/output (IO) panel looks pretty normal, but one thing missing with this Sandy Bridge motherboard is a display connector. It looks like this will be a higher-end motherboard and they won't be offering In this shot you can see that this upcoming Intel LGA1155 motherboard for Sandy Bridge does have two Super Speed USB 3.0 headers, but if you look close you can see the NEC USB 3.0 controller chip just below the first PCI Express x16 slot. This puts to rest all the rumors that Intel will have integrated USB 3.0 support in their chipset.
hardwere Motherboard, As any enthusiast will tell you, more is always better. Automotive enthusiasts are always looking for every last horsepower that can be squeezed out of their setup. When it comes to computer enthusiasts, we look for every MHz that can be gained, even if it means spending triple the amount of money for the latest and greatest cooling device.
When Intel and AMD launched dual core CPU’s, PC enthusiasts everywhere frothed at the mouth with the thought of having so much processing power. Of course, nowadays we have 6 core CPU’s on the extreme end of desktop computing. Sure, there are 8 core CPU’s on the server side of things, but those are extremely expensive and would perform poorly (comparatively) in a desktop environment.
Today we are taking a look at the ultimate enthusiast motherboard. It takes a blend of desktop processor overclocking features and multiple graphics cards, and mixes it with server processors to give you the baddest system you can get your hands on, the EVGA Classified SR-2. The EVGA Classified SR-2, or Super Record 2, uses an Intel 5520 server chipset to give us the power to run two Intel Xeon server processors. The LGA1366 socket is home to both the Intel i7 900 series desktop and Xeon 5500 (Quad core) and 5600 (Hex core) CPU’s. To anyone dreaming of dual Intel hex core CPU’s cranked up to 4GHz+: your motherboard has arrived.
The idea of overclocking Xeon’s isn’t really new; you may remember that in 2008 Intel released a dual socket motherboard aimed at enthusiasts with Skulltrail. While it was impressive performance-wise, the fun factor was severely hampered by the use of FB-DIMM’s. Not only are they power hungry and hot running, they limited overclocking potential to bumping up the CPU multiplier. Of course, there was only one LGA 771 Xeon, the prohibitively expensive QX9775, that came with unlocked multipliers. The EVGA SR-2 has no such constraints; any 1366 Xeon will work and you can use just about any DDR3. With that in mind, you can start to see then that the EVGA SR-2 has a lot going for it with a large number of options.
There are a few differences between the i7 and Xeon processors, the most important of which is that the Xeon has two QPI links while i7 has just one. That second QPI link allows the processors to be used in a dual socket motherboard. For those of you that got excited about having a pair of i7 930’s in the SR-2, sorry to burst your bubble but it’s not going to work. The SR-2 can run only a single i7 CPU so such a setup would defeat the purpose and be a complete waste of money. Oh yeah, the cost! The EVGA SR-2 comes in at a cool $569 plus shipping. While at first this may seem like an overpriced motherboard, you have to consider that this is the ONLY dual socket mainboard for socket 1366 with any sort of built in overclocking functions. This beast was meant to be benchmarked hard and torture tested.
GIGABYTE has a long standing reputation in the enthusiast community as a top tier manufacturer. While GIGABYTE is among the top enthusiast motherboards, not all of their boards are aimed at the folk's that are budget-less. Today we are fortunate enough to have one of GIGABYTE's budget minded socket 1366 motherboards in hand to put through the paces. The GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 is a low cost, budget friendly motherboard based on the Intel X58 chipset. At the time of writing the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 is the fourth least expensive socket 1366 motherboard at Newegg.com coming in at only $179.99.
While the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 is aimed at the budget minded consumer. There isn't many features that GIGABYTE decided to leave off. Those that they did leave off, are perhaps past their prime or haven't yet become a main stream staple in the computer industry. That's not to say the the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 is lacking in features, because that is far from accurate. Features such as the GIGABYTE ON/OFF Charge that allow you to charge mobile devices even while the computer is shutdown, is just one of the many features that I like about the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3. Other features like Cloud OC, Hotkey OC, and software like Easy Tune 6 are just a few of the features that the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 can lay claim to.
Today we have a special treat for you! Maybe we can consider it an early Christmas present. Since it has been rumored that the new Sandy Bridge platform from Intel is coming soon, we are going to start showing off some of the Intel P67 motherboards. While we aren't able to give you any details on performance of the new platform, we can give you a sneak peak at some of the up and coming Sandy Bridge Motherboards! The new Socket 1155 motherboard that we are going to look at today is the ECS P67H2-A Black Extreme. Today will cover some of the key features of the ECS P67H2-A. The ECS P67H2-A Black Extreme takes advantage of the new P67 chipset from Intel, and utilizes the new LGA1155 socket as well as the new 2nd generation of Core processors from Intel!
One of the key features of the ECS P67H2-A Black Extreme Sandy Bridge motherboard that will separate it from the competition is the Hydra Core. What is that you may ask, well in short, it allows you to run different graphics cards from different manufacturers. By that I don't mean an AMD Radeon HD 5870 from XFX and one from Sapphire. What I mean is the core manufacturers, AMD and NVIDIA. Ultimately we will be able to run a combination like the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 in parallel for improved performance. If you are curious about how this is accomplished, it is done using the Lucid HydraLogix 200 processor.
AMD is announcing their upcoming Hybrid CrossFire technology today in New York during their financial analyst day, which is aimed at improving gaming graphics at lower price points. What makes this announcement even more exciting is the fact that they are showing off upcoming chipsets and graphics cards in the process. Legit Reviews was able to get a sneak peak at one of these systems just hours before they were shown to the public, so read on and take a look at what we got to see. AMD had a demo system setup that was running their latest and greatest chipset, the 780G. The AMD 780G chipset (codenamed RS780D) is one of three new chipsets that is going to be replacing the now year old AMD 690G chipset and by doing so will add support for new features like hybrid CrossFire. The logic behind doing hybrid CrossFire is simple. The majority of desktop computers sold today feature integrated graphics, which have a history of having a hard time playing the latest game titles. What if a consumer was able to install an entry level graphics card and be able to link the integrated and discrete GPU's together for improved performance? Since AMD makes chipsets and video cards this wasn't too hard and with the 780G chipset and the Radeon 3400 series of graphics cards they were able to pull it off. To make things even easier, when a Radeon HD 3450 or Radeon HD 3470 is installed into a 780G motherboard ATI CrossFire technology is automatically enabled. This makes for a simple user expierence and a breeze for system builders that are looking to save time and money.
Inside the test system AMD was running the ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card, which will be released early next year for right around $49. The clock speeds for this card are not set in stone yet, but we were told to expect a core clock of 600MHz and a memory clock of 500MHz for the GDDR2 ICs. Those looking for a little more muscle will be happy to know that AMD will also release an ATI Radeon HD 3470 graphics card for $59. When running one of these discrete cards on a 780G motherboard you will be able to run two monitors off the discrete video card and two off the integrated graphics. This is great for those that want to run Surround View, but keep in mind that when running Surround View Hybrid Crossfire has to be disabled.
When it comes to performance the Radeon HD 3450 isn't going to dominate any games, but it does score a respectable ~1650 points in 3DMark 2006 on the test system powered by a 2.2GHz AMD Phenom processor. If you enable Hybrid CrossFire the score in 3DMark 2006 jumps up to ~2660 points, which is a boost of over 60%. We didn't get a chance to see the ATI Radeon HD 3470 graphics card in action, but AMD said it should score over 3000 points when run in Hybrid CrossFire on 3DMark 2006. AMD let us try out Call of Duty 4 at 1024x768 with decent quality settings on the system pictured here and we were seeing 20-50 frames per second Hybrid CrossFire enabled. The game was playable for sure. Another game we played on the test system was Unreal Tournament 3 at 1280x1024. The Radeon HD 3450 averaged 33.67 FPS with 65% of the frames being over 30FPS. When Hybrid CrossFire was enabled the average jumped up to 43.68 FPS, but this time 83% of the frames being rendered were over 30 frames per second. To sum Hybrid CrossFire up, we saw a 30% gain in Unreal Tournament 3 and 60% in 3DMark 2006. Not bad for adding a $49 graphics card to a board with integrated graphics. Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament were all playable at resolutions of 1024x768 to 1280x1024, which is important as they are some of the hottest game titles out right now. It should be noted that the test system we used had sideport. What is sideport you ask?
Processor known as the brains of the computer. But in reality this statement is less precise. Processor count is simply a tool appropriate. Such as addition, subtraction, multiplication or division number.
There are two parts in a processor that perform calculations. The first part is called integer unit, integer unit is the task of overcoming a simple number, such as -5, 13, ½ and others and its main task is used for business applications, such as applications Word, spreadsheets, and the Windows Desktop.
The other half is called Floating Point Unit. The task of this unit address numbers are quite difficult, as root, pi, "e." and logarithms. This section is usually used in the process of making 3D games, to calculate the position of pixels, and ima
In recent years, Intel's processor has better performance than other processors, but AMD Athlon proseccor gradually has become a strict competitor to Intel.
Below will try to explain what that processor. Processor is a very important part of the computer. He can be likened to a computer brain. That is an electronic circuit that functions to logically respond to and process all instructions which turn on computer.
How does its shape? Take a look at the picture below.
