ASRock 890FX Deluxe: Comprehensive Motherboard Review & Investigation of Thuban Performance Scaling
by Rajinder Gill on August 31, 2010 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- ASRock
- AMD
- Motherboards
- 890FX
|
Testbed Setup Overclocking / Benchmark Testbed |
|
| Processors | Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2GHz 6MB L3 Cache |
| CPU Voltage | Various |
| Cooling | Scythe Mugen II |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX620W |
| Memory | CorsairXMS3 CM4GX3M2A1600C7 2x2GB Kit |
| Memory Settings | Various |
| Video Cards | Radeon HD5870 |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 10.7 |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD |
| Optical Drives | Plextor PX-B900A, Toshiba SD-H802A |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64 bit |
| . | |
We are splitting today’s test into two parts. In part one; we take a look at the impact of Thuban’s CPU-NB (or IMC, integrated Memory Controller) on performance, courtesy of our retail 1090T and the ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4. In part two we’re pitting the ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4 against ASUS’ M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 through our usual but slightly revised and condensed benchmark suit.
For the latter, we would like to ask readers ahead for an understanding that this is our first evaluation of the 890FX-based board and we are in the middle of devising a proper testing suit for this platform. Once we have more experience with products based on this chipset, we will have a thorough comparison of power consumption and onboard controllers, including multi-GPU performance.
To make up for this deficit, we decided to spend some time on investigating the new CPU-NB of Thuban. It is a well-known secret that Phenom architecture benefits from faster CPU-NB. The bottlenecks are manifold, but we hypothesize a few.
- The CPU-NB’s frequency is directly responsible for the transaction of data between CPU and memory. Lower CPU-NB frequency thus tends to waste memory bandwidth.
- The CPU-NB’s frequency is also the CPU’s L3 cache frequency. Even when memory access doesn’t come into equation, slow L3 impacts the overall CPU performance.
- The CPU-NB is what controls the memory (it’s another name is “IMC” after all). A higher quality IMC tends to be more flexible when it comes to DIMM frequency and timings. Whether overclocked or not, previous generation Phenoms didn’t like high speed memory, even though the same modules were perfectly able on Intel platforms.
Assuming the above, it is easy to imagine the performance impact CPU-NB plays on this architecture. Any of the above can present a performance bottleneck. Prior to E0 revision silicon (Thuban is E0 stepping), Phenom II’s CPU-NB’s quality was frankly abysmal, and outside extreme conditions (i.e. sub-zero) there just wasn’t enough room to improve performance by manipulating CPU-NB.
However, we now see a dramatically different characteristic of the CPU-NB in E0 silicon Thuban CPUs. Previously unthinkable frequencies under air-cooling are now a possibility, and it handles high frequency DIMMs much better as well. So we think it is a perfect time to start examining the impact of the CPU-NB in AMD’s “Star” architecture.
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jonup - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Very impressed to see this approach to your testing. I hete when reading an MB reveiw and reach the benchmark section. Same chipsets tend to perform the same. A guess this would be an one-off since in the next review it will be redundant.vol7ron - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
agreed, nice review.Finally - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I must say that this review was nice to have, I'm much more interested in the 870 Chipset.It's almost identical, except the support of Crossfire, which I have no use for.
RequiemsAllure - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
ahh, but on the ASRock 870 extreme 3 Crossfire is supported.SpaceRanger - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
In the article:USB 3.0 Performance
We use Acronis TrueImage Home (v. 10) to make a backup of our installation drive to an external SATA 3.0 Gbps drive via USB 3.0 and compare it with USB 2.0 and SATA 3.0 Gbps transfers. The total data backed up is approximately 20 GB. We could not complete the backup on the 890GTD Pro/USB3 in a consistent manner.
My Question:
Why were you not able to complete the backup on the 890GTD Pro/USB3? At the conclusion you state :
Is it worth $180 when ASUS 890GTD Pro/USB3 is $30 less? We think the difference largely comes down to the board’s selection of components.
I would call not being able to do a simple backup with the 890GTD enough of a showstopper to not even consider the board. Am I missing something here?
semo - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I'm also wondering about the SATA3 performance. An issue was identified here on AT with the new 8xx chipset earlier which slowed down SSDs considerably compared to ICH10 controllers. Has this been fixed yet?Kane Y. Jeong - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Hi,Please check Raja's ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 review here.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2959
We purchased another retail M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 off the shelf, and still ran into inconsistent USB 3.0 performance. Sometimes the drives lost connections, and Acronis reported error in the middle of backup process. Success ratio to complete the backup was about 30~40%. An alternative would be to purchase M4A89GTD Pro (not Pro/USB3) for $10 less and go with an add-in card. We did not experience this issue on ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4.
SpaceRanger - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Thank you for the response. So you're advising getting the Pro (not Pro/USB3) instead of the 890FX? Cause Raja's findings would be enough for me to not want to get it.nbjknk - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link
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optarix12 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
This is a very nice writeup and relevant to my interests to boot. Thank you for the concise article Kane. Oh, and if you ever figure out why you saw the inexplicable results you should do a part 2!