In the world of hardware it's often busy each half year we see new products, respins, updates and what not. One of the more surprising mainboard chipsets over the past year and a half has to be the AMD 700 series chipset. It started at 780, went to the 790 series, the entry level 700 series and a couple of months ago the latest derivative of this chipset was the AMD 785 chipset.
With the six-core Thuban processor slowly rearing it's head and new technologies like USB 3.0 and SATA 6G on the horizon, AMD needed another update to their motherboard chipset, to get it prepared for the 6-core lovin abut as well as bringing support for the new interfaces.
As such they today will release the AMD 890GX chipset, the first in the 800 series. A motherboard chipset that is based of the recently introduced AMD 785 chipset, it has been slightly revised though and is now paired with the all new AMD SB850 Southbridge chip. Keywords for this chipset are more processor compatibility, better IGP performance, increased bandwidth for the new technologies, embedding a Gigabit Ethernet into the SB850 chip and what surprised us ... AMD has already added a SATA 6G controller into that SB850 chip, which was a brilliant call to make.
What many people however initially expected (yours truly included) was early adoption of USB 3.0 into this chipset as well, this is the one thing that won't be happening. But with a lot of bandwidth and interfaces available on the new chipset we'll see ODMs simply add a USB 3.0 controller chip from NEC onto their motherboard, making sure that most of the 890GX motherboards out there will get support for USB 3.0 as well. And that would make the AMD 890GX motherboards to date the most versatile, up-to date and future ready motherboards for sure.
So without further ado let's have a peek at the all new 890GX chipset from AMD, after which we'll show you an MSI retail board and a lot of tests done with this all new platform.
The AMD 890GX Chipset
So to understand the 890GX chipset from AMD all we simply need to do is tell you a thing or two about it's features. The 890GX chipset consists out of two chips that are added onto the motherboard PCB. The Northbridge chip, which is called the 890GX and the paired (Southbridge chip) SB850. Together they form the infrastructure for all standard devices, connectivity and interconnect bandwidth.
The Northbridge chip primarily functions as HUB for your processor, memory and PCIe links towards your graphics chipset. It is the primary chip responsible for these functions, the GX (opposed to FX) extension however also means there's an IGP embedded into this ASIC. Much like the 785 chipset the 890GX has a GPU tucked nicely away into the die. It's based of the Radeon HD 4200 silicon, the Radeon HD 4290 to be precise.
Integrated Graphics HD 4290
DirectX 10.1 support
2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0)
Full hardware decode acceleration of H.264/VC-1/MPEG2
Hardware decode acceleration of a secondary video stream (Picture-in-Picture) (10-20% CPU usage decrease)
Improved ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
Enhanced DVD up-conversion to HD
Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
Multichannel LPCM over HDMI (no PAP, no HD audio bitstreaming)
For an IGP it's a pretty cool one as for any major high-definition function it is completely capable thanks to the embedded UVD 2.0 video core. The IGP is based of the RV620 core which is DirectX 10.1 compatible. That fact also makes it a nice card for Windows 7 as it allows for low-level DirectCompute functions. We again see an optional link to a dedicated memory cache, the IGP can utilize a dedicated DDR3 (64 & 128-bit) performance framebuffer cache, or alternatively will hog some of your system memory.
Being a series 4000 graphics core, it will open up ATI Stream technology, which means you can encode media files over the GPU with 3rd party software like MediaShow Espresso or even accelerate Adobe Photoshop and Adobe flash.
Games wise a simple game or two could be played fairly okay in lower resolutions, It's powerful enough for the low-level stuff, but for anything a little more serious you'll of course need a dedicated graphics card. The embedded IGP still packs 40 shader processors with a core and shader clock at 700 MHz. This solution will be faster than the IGP Intel's Clarkdale processors for example have embedded.
Other than that all the standard features are there like HyperTransport 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, ATI Hybrid graphics support. The 890GX has two x8 or one x16 PCIe link available for - dedicated graphics and then six times a x1 link for other kit and gear. And I'd strongly like to hint to USB 3.0.
With an updated Hyperlink (revision 3) we now can connect to the SB850 chip with a well-appointed 2GB/sec bandwidth. Yes we just arrived at the next station on the motherboard, the SB850 Southbridge.
The SB850 Southbridge
The new Southbridge is a nice update over the older SB7x0 series. The Southbridge ASIC is always used for peripheral connectivity like your HDDs, audio, USB, PATA and so on.
The biggest changes then. Well firstly, we see the first chipset vendor actually implement SATA 6G (SATA3), this new update of your SATA connectors will increase the bandwidth on the SATA controller from 3 towards 6 GBit/sec. Now for regular HDDs that is not really very important. But with the tremendous rise of fast SSD drives this really is a large plus. Typically we get 3000 Mbit/s : 8 = 375 MB/sec bandwidth minus tolerances and random occurrences. SATA3 is doubling it up, as such we get 6000 Mbit/sec : 8 = 750 MB/sec of available bandwidth for your storage devices. As you can understand, with SSDs getting faster and faster that's just a much warmed and welcomed increase of bandwidth. Also do not forget RAID performance, which an see massive benefits of the updated SATA interface.
The early adoption of SATA 6G is a bold yet extremely good move from AMD.
There's more to the SB850 though, it will now allow you to connect up-to 14 USB 2.0 devices, of course comes with support for PATA and 8 channel HD Audio and the old fashioned PCI interface, but new is the inclusion of a 1000/100/10 Mbit/s Ethernet. And all these facts combined allow any ODM to make a very diverse motherboards with the usage of just the AMD 890GX chipset. Literally, you pop in memory, a processor, a HDD and a PSU and you'd already have a fully functional extremely diverse PC. So with the new chipset AMD can address any market whether that is entry level, mainstream or when you pop in high-speed DDR3 and a dedicated graphics card ... high-end.
So we have received several 890GX motherboards a while ago, I wanted to show you what to expect and of course we'll then dive into a performance overview of the new chipset combined with a Phenom II X4 965 processor. Let's start off in this review with the MSI 890GXM-G65, and in following articles we'll look at offerings from ECS and ASUS as well.
BIOS features
Below an overview of the BIOS. The BIOS is very much catered for overclocking and offers a really wide variety of choices.
Since showing motherboard BIOS screenshots always misses out a lot we are now switching to high-definition video footage showing you around in the BIOS. This way we hope to give you a better insight of BIOS features and functionality.
A plethora of options can be found really. Small side note, if not enabled at default click on HD in the YouTube window to see the high-definition footage. We record our footage in 1920x1080P. Especially showing a BIOS with a lot of letters and numbers that can help out a lot in readability and sharpness..
We hope you like this new approach to showing you BIOS features; and as you can see, this motherboard has a fantastic BIOS feature set and firmware flash options.
Product Gallery MSI 890GXM-E65
On the next few pages we'll show you some photos. The images were taken at high-resolution and then cropped and scaled down. The camera used was a Canon 450D 12 MegaPixel.
Alright, let's take a look at the product. Here we have the entire bundle. The product is to be positioned in the sub-125 USD market. Typically motherboard manufacturers therefore skimp a little on the little extras but it's quite okay. Next to the motherboard you'll receive the back plate, driver CD, a SATA cable and a Parallel ATA (IDE) cable.
As you can see this is mATX motherboard with integrated Radeon series 4 graphics. We also spot two x16 PCIe slots for CrossfireX graphics though when used simultaneously your PCie lane configuration will be split up as 8x:8x. There's also a x1 PCie slot and one traditional PCI slot.
So here we have the back panel I/O connectivity. Immediately I'm impressed, that is chucked full alright. We spot combo PS2 mouse and keyboard connector, then one D-Sub (VGA), DVI and HDMI connector (great connectivity!). We see (and I love this) an optical TOSLINK sound output, a total of 4x USB 2.0 ports and then 2x USB 3.0 (blue ones), 1x eSATA (6G), firewire, a Gigabit Ethernet LAN connector and then the 8.1 channels of analog audio as well.
The embedded Radeon HD 4290 on the Northbridge is HDMI 1.3 compliant, so it also supports higher bandwidth and greater color depth for future video standards.
The onboard audio for the MSI 890GXM-E65 motherboard is provided by a Realtek ALC889 CODEC. This is a fully High Definition Audio 1.0 compliant CODEC that supports ten DAC channels that can split into 7.1+2 Channel Front Panel Audio simultaneous output and comes with a 104dB signal to noise ratio.
When we flip the board 90 degrees counter clockwise we look at socket AM3, and also see quality Japanese capacitors and eminence Ferrite core chokes. The 4-pin CPU fan header is located below the CPU Socket positioned really well. We'd preferred to have seen a 8-pin header here though. When overclocking the processor we can easily draw much more current. So a little extra would have been nice.
When we flip the board around once more we spot 4 DIMM slots. Up-to 16 GB can be configured here. The 24-pin motherboard connector is placed reasonably okay in the lower middle. below it, the traditional IDE Parallel ATA connector.
Moving slightly to the left, here we see four SATA3 ports and then (hard to see) behind them another SATA3 connector. At the back panel you'll notice a eSATA port thus that makes connectivity for six SATA based devices. All ports are SATA3 thus SATA 6G creating massive bandwidth for SATA3 compatible storage units.
The left side of the motherboard. Underneath that little grey MSI logo'ed heatsink the Southbridge chip is located; SB850. Below it we spot the front panel connectors, not color coded, and roughly in the middle we spot another several headers for USB ports.
When we zoom in a little we see an OCSWITCH containing two micro jumpers. The switches can increase the processor base frequency on the fly.
ON-ON = default ON-OFF = 10% extra OFF-ON= 15% extra OFF-OFF = 20% extra
It only effects the base frequency and does not have an effect on anything else like voltages etc.
ATI Stream
In current day and age there is more to GPUs than just playing games. More and more non-gaming related features can and are being offloaded to the GPU. Roughly a year ago ATI introduced ATI Stream. This is a software layer that allows software developers to 'speak' with the GPU and have it process data using your graphics card. This really is the most simple & basic description I can give it.
Now I'd like to point you towards one function you should all do with your GPU when it's doing nothing.
Folding@Home using the ATI Radeon series 4000 GPU Folding at Home is a project where you can have your GPU or CPU (when the PC is not used) help out in solving diseases by folding proteins. Over the past 12 months a lot of progress has been made between the two parties involved. And right now there is a GPU folding client available that works with Radeon 4000 series graphics processors. It is ATI Stream based, meaning that all Stream ready GPUs can start folding.
Guru3D team is ranking in the Folding@Home top 80, yes... I'm very proud of our guys crunching these numbers, especially since there are tens of thousands of other teams. The client is out, if possible please join team Guru3D and let's fold away some nasty stuff. The good thing is, you won't even notice that it's running.
Our Guru3D team number is 69411 and if you decide to purchase a 4000 series product, guys, promise me you'll use it to fold for us. By making this move my dear friends, there are now 70 million GPUs available to compute the biggest mysteries in diseases and illnesses. Again, let's make Team Guru3D the biggest one available guys, join our team.
Universal Video Decoder 2.0 Always worth a mention is UVD, short for Universal Video Decoder. With proper 3rd party software like WinDVD or PowerDVD you can enable support for UVD 2.0 which provides hardware acceleration of H.264 and VC-1 high definition video formats used by Blu-ray and HD DVD. The video processor allows the GPU to apply hardware acceleration and video processing functions while keeping power consumption & CPU utilization low.
You will have sheer decoding precision on the Radeon 4000 series. Low CPU utilization whilst scoring maximum image quality. One improvement has been made as well; you can now for example upscale your 1920x1080 streams fine to a 2560x1600 sized monitor (no more black borders).
New in the GPU architecture of the series 4000 is an updated video engine. It's not much different opposed to the old UVD engine, yet has two new additions for post-processing, decoding and enhancing video streams. Dual stream decoding is one of the new features. For example, if you playback a Blu-ray movie and simultaneously want to see a director's commentary (guided by video) you can now look at both the movie and in a smaller screen see the additional content (like picture-in-picture). Obviously this is Blu-ray 2.0 compatibility here, and the additional content is an actual feature of the movie. But definitely fun to see.
A new feature also is Dynamic Contrast Enhancement which was introduced by team green last year.
With the embedded Radeon HD 4200 GPU also comes the complete Avivo array of functionality
It does pretty much what the name says; Dynamic Contrast Enhancement technology will improve the contrast ratios in videos in real-time on the fly. It's a bit of a trivial thing to do, as there are certain situations where you do not want your contrast increased. Think for example a scary thriller, dark environment... and all of a sudden your trees light up. So with that in mind; the implementation has been done very delicately. It does work pretty well, but personally I'd rather tweak the contrast ratio myself and leave it at that. Another feature is Dynamic Color Enhancement. It's pretty much a color tone enhancement feature and will slightly enforce a color correction where it's needed. We'll show you that in a bit as I quite like this feature; it makes certain aspects of a movie a little more vivid.
Some like them, others hate these features. I say it's good to have choices and anything that can enhance image quality is nice to have in my book. Directly tied to the UVD engine is obviously also sound. AMD's Radeon series 4000 cards have a feature that the competition does not have. It can pass lossless sound directly through the HDMI connector. This has been upgraded as it's now possible to have 7.1 channel lossless sound, meaning DTS-ES and all other formats have now become a reality. A very nice move indeed as that distance between the living room and your PC is getting smaller each year. Yours truly for example has a nice Onkyo receiver which I connect HDMI to. This receiver will take those 7.1 channel sounds with a lot of interest, process them, and then pass through the HDMI content itself to the HD television. All that over just one HDMI cable.
Fantastic if you are watching a Blu-ray movie, simply connect HDMI to your HDTV for PCM sound, or connect it through a TrueHD/Dolby HD receiver and get that sound going on through that receiver of yours. All with one simple cable.
Again - mind you that to be able to playback high-def content you'll still need WinDVD or PowerDVD, a HD source (Blu-ray player) and a HDCP monitor or television.
For those interested in MKV / x.264 GPU based content acceleration, playback and image quality enhancements, please read this guide we have written. We spotted this lovely little free application to manage this.
Here's an example of that, a 1080p MKV movie being accelerated and enhanced over the embedded motherboard GPU, observe processor load please.
MKV x.264 1080P - Complex Image Sharpening and 16-235 -> 0-255 shaders activated in MP Classic HT edition -- no frames dropped yet granted it's borderline pushing close to the maximum of shader processor capability.
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