AMD's 890GX Chipset - Same Graphics, Better South Bridge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 2, 2010 4:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet MAC
The SB850 includes a new integrated Gigabit Ethernet MAC. However, unless I’m reading this incorrectly both the ASUS and Gigabyte boards I’ve seen thus far still rely on external Realtek RTL8111 series single chip MAC/PHY solutions.
| Windows File Copy from NAS to SSD | AMD 890GX | Intel H55 |
| Peak Bandwidth | 952 Mbps | 952 Mbps |
Performance is as expected - transfer rates approach 1000Mbps regardless of platform. I don’t believe these boards are using AMD’s integrated MAC though.
Final Words
At this point there’s not much to say about AMD’s 890GX. With no improvement in graphics performance, no die shrink and no new audio/video features today’s launch is really about the SB850 South Bridge.
Native 6Gbps SATA support is an impressive move by AMD. Unfortunately I’m not totally sold on AMD’s SATA controller. Compared to the SB750, the new SB850 appears to be a step forward. However, even the new south bridge isn’t as fast as Intel’s I/O controllers when it comes to peak performance with a high end SSD. With standard hard drives and even slow SSDs I doubt there’s much cause for concern, but as SSDs become more commonplace we’re going to see controller deficiencies exposed more readily. I had hoped for a bigger reset in south bridge performance with the 890GX/SB850 combo. Perhaps it’ll take a few more BIOS/driver revisions before we get there. Update: We're getting closer!
While I would have liked to have seen native USB 3 support as well, at least AMD is willing to provide enough bandwidth to feed any external USB 3 controllers at this point. It’s more of a theoretical advantage than anything else today, but it’s worth giving credit for.
I get the distinct feeling that there just wasn’t much effort put into 890GX. The real focus for AMD has been Llano and making sure that chip has the sort of significant improvement in graphics performance that we’ve been waiting for. Until then, it looks like we’ll get a model number update with few new features. In a sense, AMD has finally taken a page out of Intel’s chipset playbook.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
65 Comments
View All Comments
semo - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,I noticed something strange with my Sharkoon ( http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/docking_stat...">http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/d...tations/... )device recently and I thought you might find it interesting. I had a 3.5" SATA drive connected to it and I just switched off my PC. When it turned off, the case fans kept spinning (CPU fan spinning up/down constantly) and the card reader/temp sensor turned red and started beeping. It kept doing after I took off the power cord. After 10 mins of looking around and head scratching I remembered that the Sharkoon has power going to it. Unplugged that and the PC shut down. I don’t think I’ve seen this anywhere else but the Sharkoon’s USB power is actually bidirectional (the DriveLink at least). That doesn’t happen usually I think and maybe different motherboards won’t like this.
That’s unfortunate that your C300 died. I wonder why if a non essential device like drive fails, the system doesn’t POST. There shouldn’t be such a condition ever (I actually have one SATA drive that does that actually). Something as simple as removing the DVD drive belt can cause the system to POST or at least take much longer to do so. Why, the thing is not essential?
Also do you have an explanation why the Vertex LE has such good write performance compared to read. I’ve assumed that you expect the opposite from NAND flash.
Looking to full review of the 890FX, hopefully it will be more polished!
SunLord - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
that has to be a defect... There is no way anyone would design something to send power into a computer via a usb port it would cause all kinda of bad voodoo for the systemSunLord - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Why does the index indicates that the 890GX is DirectX 10.1 and has UVD2 while the 790GX is DX10 and UVD1 if they are exactly the same? Is the index wrong or do these changes require no hardware tweaks?Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I've updated the article a bit. The move from DX10 to 10.1 in AMD's case didn't require much of a change. Technically the 890GX is more like a 785G/790GX hybrid. Either way, performance is identical between all of the cores clocked at 700MHz.Take care,
Anand
SunLord - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
Put some active cooling on it and overclock it!psychobriggsy - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
At least the southbridge is better featured, with SATA3 and GigE, even if the former wasn't really tested in this review, and the latter wasn't utilised.Shame that AMD didn't bump the shader count to (e.g.,) 60, it would have made a massive difference since Intel actually put some effort in on their recent attempts. Then again, Cedar 5450 should have had 160 shaders in my opinion to make it a reasonable low-end purchase.
Clearly it's a tide-over chipset until Llano changes everything.
nice123 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
They can't boost it to 60 sadly because they are arranged in blocks of 40 - the next step up is 80, which is of course Radeon 5450 territory since they decided not to add any more shaders to that and kept it exactly the same performance as the 4550.fiki959 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I am little disappointed with the new chipset. But there is a reason that AMD didn't improve IGP performance because doing so will probably hurt radeon 5450 sales. An improvement of 30-50% will bring the IGP very close to low end dedicated cards so maybe that is the main reason or staying with 55nm process have something to with the decision I don't know..By the way I see some Athlon 2 laptops in my country, some review for these CPUs please.
shrihara - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
If it has USB 3.0 which is backward compatible, then what is the need of having USB 2.0 along with that? I was hoping that AMD 890 will come up with only USB 3.0 on board like SATA 6GBps.strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
because for whatever reason AMD didn't include USB3 and they didn't want to spend the money/PCIe lanes on a bunch of external USB3 controllers?