“Quality Products Create Faithful Customers” is the motto that drives MSI. Founded in 1986, MSI has been bringing quality computer components to us ever since. Today we have the opportunity to look at one such quality component, the MSI 890FXA-GD70. The MSI 890FXA-GD70 is the top of the line socket AM3 motherboard from MSI. Built around the AMD 890FX and SB850 chipset the MSI 890FXA-GD70 is aimed at the power users and enthusiasts.
Being that the MSI 890FXA-GD70 is designed with the enthusiast and extremist in mind means that it is designed for high performance and long life under extreme conditions. To accommodate these requirements it is built using the highest standards and Military Class Components. All of the Military Class components meet the temperature requirements of US Department of Defense MIL-PRF-39003L standard. What does this translate to four the end users? It means better stability and less heat! MSI uses Icy Chokes which offer a 20 degree Celsius lower temperature than traditional chokes. All of the traditional capacitors are solid capacitors that feature an Aluminum core. In addition to the solid caps, MSI also uses Hi-c Caps (Highly-conductive polymerized Capacitor). The Hi-c Caps use a Tantalum Core which is a rare and highly stable material. The Hi-C Caps have a life expectancy eight times that of solid capacitors.
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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.
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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.
"Hopefully Useful"
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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.
"Hopefully Useful"
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If you have ever used Super Speed USB3.0 you already know how conveniently fast it is. Although, to date there has been a single drawback. That drawback is Super Speed USB3 has only been found on the rear I/O panel of newer motherboards. There are a few cases out there, like the ThermalTake Armor A60, that have a cable that will plug into the rear I/O panel USB3 ports to bring USB3 ports to the front of the case. Unfortunately, cases that feature this are not as common as one might hope, and the cases that do have this feature may not be a style that everyone likes. Insteps is a comparatively small company with what I believe is a groundbreaking new feature and the first to make it to market. ASRock has now released four new motherboards that will supply you with an additional two Super Speed USB3 ports on the front of your machine.
"Hopefully Useful"
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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.
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When it comes to Motherboards based on Intel's X58 chipset your choices are plentiful. Price to performance and features tend to weigh heavily on most consumer's minds these days, and prices on Intel X58 motherboards range from as little as $164.99 all the way up to $599.99. Today we get to look at the ASUS Sabertooth X58 Heavy Duty Motherboard.
ASUS Sabertooth X58 Military Specifications Copyrigh
Specifically which standards? I am currently awaiting a response from ASUS on that. If it's on the web it must be true, right? Does it really matter, though? Like I stated above the ASUS Sabertooth X58 motherboard is backed by a five year warranty which is above and beyond the warranty on most ASUS motherboards. This means they have enough confidence in this particular product to extend the typical warranty 66%. Makes one wonder, where is that confidence from ASUS in other ASUS motherboards? Well, that's a whole different can of worms, isn't it?
*Edit*
Well it seems that I stuck my foot in my mouth once again. In my rush to play with the ASUS Sabertooth X58 it seems that I had set the Certificate of Reliability off to the side. The Certificate of reliability includes all of the standards that the components of the ASUS Sabertooth X58 meets.
"Hopefully Useful'"
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ASUS has sent over some pictures of their upcoming Intel P67 Express chipset powered motherboards and today we are going to show them to you and give you an idea on what you can expect on the next generation of motherboards. These motherboards are for the upcoming Intel 'Sandy Bridge' processors that use a new CPU socket called LGA 1155. The upcoming LGA 1155 socket is rumored to be launching during CES 2011 and has been designed as a replacement for the LGA 1156 socket that came out back in 2009. Intel is said to be working on a number of chipsets for this platform and the ones that we have heard about are the P65 and P67 along with the H65 and H67 and the Q67 and Q65. The P series chipsets don't support video output while the H and Q series does. Now that we know the very basics of what is coming out here in the next couple of months we feel comfortable showing you some Intel P67 chipset powered boards by ASUS.We have been told that ASUS will have 17 motherboards for this socket at the time of launch. Ten of the boards will be based on the P67 chipset, six on the H67 chipset and one on the Q67.
The first board that we have to show you is the ASUS P8P67 Pro, which is a full size ATX solution. This board sports a black and blue color scheme and as you can see is totally passively cooled without the use of any heat pipes connecting the three blue heatsinks. The entire ASUS LGA1155 motherboard lineup uses a new VRM system that ASUS calls Digi+ VRM. This means that ASUS is now using digital VRMs on the boards and that ASUS' EPU microcontroller handles how many power phases are in use at any given time by monitoring the temperature and power draw on the board. We were told by ASUS That Digi+ VRM is able go down to just one power phase or go all the way up to 16 power phases on some of their boards. The ASUS P8P67 Pro has a 12+2 power phase design, so it would only be able to go up to 12 on this specific board. Users of these boards will be able to adjust the load-lone-calibration and even VRM frequency in 10MHz steps, which is a nice touch for advanced users. This is an important new feature for this series of boards and as you can see the retail box of the ASUS P8P67 Pro shows this new feature off on the upper
right hand corner.
Looking straight down at the P8P67 Pro you can see that the board has four dual-channel DDR3 memory slots, so while we are sure the board will offer full support of higher frequency memory there is no triple channel memory coming to the mainstream Intel platforms. This board features three PCI x16 slots. From what we understand the primary slot runs at x16 if one video card is used, but if two cards are used it becomes x8 along with the second slot. The third PCIe x16 slot (the black one on the fair left) is presumably x4 and ideal for use with sound cards or maybe a RAID card. Notice that the board has 'BT GO!' written on the PCB just above the CPU socket. ASUS says that all of their ATX motherboards of this series will have Bluetooth onboard as a standard feature. One of the reasons for this is that ASUS has designed some new software called BT GO! that will allow you to overclock your system with a Smartphone. Who would have thought a few years ago that we'd be able to overclock our computers at the BIOS level with a Smartphone?
"In regards to BTGO! Your comments in the article correct in that it will offer oc functionality but on the mainstream series that is a very minor add on. The overall focus will be a quick and convenient interface that will be part of AiSuiteII. This interface will allow you to quickly search and connect to you BT enabled phone/device and then transfer/backup files, photos, music, videos etc. There will also be a special contact manager function allowing exporting of contact information from your phone to the OS quickly. This along with a number of special functions will round out the BTGO! software package." - ASUS PR
In this shot you can also see 'Dual Intelligent Processors II' written on the PCB. This is the companies second generation Dual Intelligent Processors design on their motherboards. The first time around the company claimed that the ASUS TurboV Processing Unit (TPU) added up to 37% more performance while the proprietary ASUS Energy Processing Unit (EPU) cut the power drain by up to 80%. It will be interesting to see what changes have been made in their second attempt. 
You can't really tell from the picture above, but the ASUS P8P67 Pro supports two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 headers thanks to an NEC controller, but that might change down the road when better controller designs come out. We have also seen online rumors that these boards will support a new EFI BIOS. This could be one of the biggest changes in more than a decade as an introduction of a more user friendly BIOS interface with mouse support and faster boot times would be nice to have.
The ASUS P8P67 Pro motherboards rear I/O panel doesn't feature any video outputs because all P67 chipset based boards require discrete graphics. There are a pair of PS/2 ports for a keyboard and mouse, optical S/PDIF out, the Bluetooth transmitter, six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, IEEE 1394a port, two e-SATA ports, gigabit Ethernet and finally the eight channel audio connectors
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GIGABYTE has released a number of X58 based motherboards since the chipset made its appearance in 2008. While they don't have the most X58 boards out there, they do offer some of the best. GIGABYTE first released the GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 1.0) not too long ago and it was well received with it's low price and excellent performance. Recently however, GIGABYTE saw fit to release a revision to the GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2.0) adding some minor changes. Just looking at the board and box will more or less leave you hanging as far as what the differences are.
It still features the same low $200 price range, USB 3.0, SATA 3, a 3 year warranty, and an identical layout as the original but GIGABYTE added four more power phases compared to eight. Another added feature is an extra USB header(red one) that employs GIGABYTE's new On/Off USB Charge technology that maintains power to the front USB even when the computer is turned off. GIGABYTE also says that the header provides around three times as much power than a standard USB port meaning that devices such as iPhones charge a bit quicker .
Most people already know about and what's expected of the X58 chipset so I won't go into details about it other than it's my preferred chipset.
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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.
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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.
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