march 31 2010

bjorn3d reviewed the Gigabyte 790XT-USB3

This motherboard was compared to the Asus M4A89GTD Pro, Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H, 790FXT A-UD5 and GA-MA770T-UD3. Allthough there are HD Tune, HD tach and ATTO benchmark results, no USB 3.0 device was tested.

Conclusion: The board essentially didn't overclock at all and next to that there's no support for SATA 6 Gb/s. The reviewers suggest you buy an 890 GX. The 890 GX is a good overclocker, has SATA6 supported by the new SB850 chipset ......more

march 29 2010

hardwaresecrets had a look at the ECS H55H-I

The H55H-I is a mini-ITX board for Core i3 and i5 CPUs. This motherboard was not compared to another board.

Conclusion: The conclusion gives more or less a summary of all the connectors and concludes that this mobo is targeted to users that would like to have a small(er) computer or a Home Theatre PC.

Overclocking: The reviewers did not perform any overclocking. On page 6 of the review you'll find some bios options and screenshots.

Benchmarks: There are no benchmarks tested.

march 26 2010

madshrimps reviewed the MSI 890GXM-G65

This mainboard was compared to the Intel DH55TC.

Conclusion: After the first boot everything worked perfectly stable. The test sessions with this board went smoothly and the editor had no reason to complain about anything. This is a solid product and certainly worth to consider when going for an AMD-based HTPC. The reviewer gave it no award because: Quote"to hand out awards a product does really have to stand out against the competition...more

march 24 2010

overclockersclub reviewed the Asus P6X58D Premium

This motherboard was compared to the ASUS P6T & Rampage II GENE, EVGA X58 SLI, MSI Eclipse SLI & X58 Platinum.

Conclusion: This mobo was easy to overclock, allthough it was behind the Rampage II Extreme, the chips' heatsinks kept it very cool, and the constuction is of a very high quality. This board is ready for the upcoming i7 hexacore 'Gulftown' processors and is of course equipped with USB3.0 and SATA6.0Gb/s, next to that it has Tri-SLI capabilities.

Overclocking: A core i7 920 was OCed @ 3990MHz, 190BCLK x 21multiplier. The test setup -- Memory: 6GB Mushkin HP3 12800 -- Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 260 -- Power Supply: CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 850w.

Benchmarks: 3DMark 06 Professional, 3DMark Vantage, Apophysis, BioShock, Call Of Duty: World at War, Cinebench 10,, Excel, Fallout 3, HD Tune, Left 4 Dead, PC Mark Vantage, POV Ray, Sciencemark, Sisoft Sandra, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, WinRar.

march 23 2010

ixbtlabs had a look at the Intel DP55WB

This mainboard is the 'junior' in Intel's P55 lineup, also known as "Whitesburg", it was not compared to another board.

Conclusion: This mobo has to rely on its cheap price because it's certainly not the best in its class. The Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 is far more attractive (eSATA, PATA, PS/2) and probably (a lot?) better in overclocking because of the 6-channel CPU power circuitry, besides that it has a high-end audio codec.

Overclocking: The reviewers did not perform any overclocking.

Benchmarks: RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.0.

march 23 2010

madshrimps reviewed the Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5

This motherboard was compared to the MSI 790FX-GD70 in the benchmarks.

Conclusion: The new SATA3 and USB3 work fine with this mobo, with the new the 870, 880 and 890 series coming up this mainboard will be hard to sell. There are still some bugs(HD write, USB issue), but on the other hand this board has been nicely engineered and the bios has many features.

Overclocking: There were issues with the F2 Bios . The overdrive tool in Windows was not working as it should. Most of the multipliers, voltage sliders and some ram timings couldn't be altered. The maximum HT was 313MHz and the Corsair GTX2 1800Mhz C6-6-6-24 stopped @ 1680MHz.

Benchmarks: 3D mark 2001 and 2006, SuperPi 1M, Wprime32, Everest, Cinebench, x264 HD, PCmark2005, MAX HT, MAX ram.

march 20 2010

overclockersclub reviewed the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R

This mainboard was compared to the ASUS P6X58D Premium, Rampage II GENE & P6T, EVGA X58 SLI, MSI X58 Platinum and Eclipse SLI.

Conclusion: FDD and IDE support for older drives, decent cooling, 4 PCI Express x16 slots and easy overclocking capabilities make this board the right choice for gamers and overclockers. Considering this mobo has USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 support, it's really value for money.

Overclocking: An Intel Core i7 920 was overclocked @3.8 GHz (181 BCLKx21 multiplier). Memory: 6GB DDR3 Mushkin HP3 12800 -- Cooling: CPU water-cooler.

Benchmarks: Apophysis, WinRar, Excel, POV Ray, SiSoft Sandra 2009, Sciencemark, HD Tune, PCMark Vantage, Far Cry 2, Cinebench 10, Crysis Warhead, BioShock

march 18 2010

guru3d reviewed the ECS A890GXM-A

This mainboard was compared to the ASUS 890X and the MSI 890X and many other Intel and AMD processors.

Conclusion: Allthough this mobo has SATA3 ECS, didn't integrate the NEC USB3 chip, you'll find that bundled with the U version that has a separate USB3 PCIe card. The overclock options from MSI and ASUS are a lot better. The ECS is a winner when we have a look at the price, boards from ASUS and MSI are roughly $50,- more expensive than the ECS motherboard. ECS is also improving the quality, a 6+1-phase VRM, onboard LEDs, ferrite chokes and solid capacitors can be seen on their mobos nowadays.

Overclocking: A Phenom II X4 965BE was overclocked @4GHz The CPU cooler used was an OCZ Vendetta 2 and 4x1024MB Corsair DDR3 memory @1333MHz.

Benchmarks: Lavalys Everest, 3D Mark2006 and Vantage, Far Cry 2, Handbrake, Crysis WarHEAD, SiSoft Sandra, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Resident Evil 5.

march 17 2010

overclockershq reviewed the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO

This mainboard was compared to the Asrock H55M and Asus P7H55D-M EVO.

Conclusion: M4A785TD-V EVO is a perfect mobo for mid level crossfireX setups, the quality of the board is very good, furthermore it has an excellent bios and good tweaking Software, 16Gigs of memory were no problem for this board. The chipset stayed cool even under stress testing.

Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition had a stable overclock @ 3.9 GHz with 18x multiplier, vCore 1.456v and BCLK 220 MHz, the CPU air-cooler used was a Noctua NH-D14 and DDR3 memory was 2x1GB Crucial PC3 16000.

Benchmarks: Apophysis, POV Ray 3.7, Sisoft Sandra, Photoshop Bench, x264 - HD Benchmark, Super Pi.

march 16 2010

ProClockers had a lok at the Jetway XBlue H55

This motherboard was compared to the Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H and The ASRock H55Pro-M.

Conclusion: The XBlue H55 is a solid mainboard that could be used for a Home Theatre PC, but is also a good overclocker, allthough BIOS options are limited.

Overclocking: Overclocking options are limited to voltages and setting ram timings, the CPU multiplier cannot be altered. With the vvCore set to 1.38v and BCLK to 180MHz the reviewer(s) reached a 4140MHz stable overclock with a Core i3 540. The DDR3 memory used was 2x2GB OCZ PC12800 and the air cooler was a Thermaltake Silent 1156.

Benchmarks: SuperPi, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Tech ARP x264 HD 3.15, Sisoft Sandra, Everest, 3D and PC Mark Vantage.

march 15 2010

elitebastards had a look at the ASUS Maximus III Formula

This mainboard was compared to the ASUS P7P55D and the Bisostar TPower I55.

Conclusion: The layout is clean and well-thought out, performance wise the this mainboard is slightly unspectacular at stock settings, but the overclocking capabilities will give you plenty of headroom to make the most of your hardware.

Overclocking: An Intel Core i5 750 had a very stable overclock @4GHz(21x190) QPI 6086MHz.The air cooler used was a Noctua NH-U12P and the DDR3 memoruy was a G-Skill 2x 2GB 1333MHz kit.

Benchmarks: WinRAR 3.71, x264 2.0,LAME 3.97, RazorLAME, X-Bit Labs File Copy Test, Everest Ultimate, DUMeter, Paint.NET, Left 4 Dead.

march 13 2010

ixbtlabs had a look at the MSI 770T-C45

This mainboard was compared to the ASRock M3A770DE in the benchmarks.

Conclusion: This motherboard can be recommended to users who still have a lot of older parts like memory and hard-drives, seldom upgrade and don't want to pay for the latest innovations. Furthermore the selection of overclocking options is quite nice for such a cheap mobo. The power consumption under full load was in between 146-170 watts.

Overclocking: A Phenom II X3 720 was overclocked @3700MHz with a vCore of 1.48v. The Phenom II 810 was OCed@ 3315MHz. A Zalman CNPS9700 AM2 and a Cooler Master Hyper Z600 air cooler were used in this test.

Benchmarks: RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3, 7-Zip 4.65 x64, WinRAR 3.80, XviD,x264 x64, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Devil May Cry 4, World in Conlict.

march 11 2010

anandtech reviewed the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3

This mainboard was compared to the MSI H55M-ED55 and the ASUS P7H57D-V EVO using several processors.

Conclusion: ASUS gives you value for money with automated overclocking, fan control, core unlocking and a very good BIOS layout. The AMD HD 4290 IGP was not as strong in the in the Cadalyst benchmark, Intel�s processor crunching advantage and bus I/O performance even makes the i3 540 faster. The random SATA3 resume behavior with the PSU is a bit of a problem, after 'getting out of' a sleep mode, you might have to reboot.

Overclocking: Using a Phenom II X2 555 the reviewers were able to unlock the 4 cores and they ended up with a stable 301 BCLK going somewhat over the 4GHz barrier with 8GB Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 memory CAS 6-7-6-20 1T running @1604MHz. Base clock overclocking using TurboV resulted in a 270MHz BCLK. the water cooling used was a Corsair H50.

Benchmarks: DPC Audio Latency, DC CPU Power Consumption, Dawn of War II, Winrar, AutoCAD 2010 x64�Cadalyst 2008, Far Cry 2, Sorenson Squeeze 6, Bibble 5.0

march 10 2010

guru3d reviewed the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3

There is a video that will guide you through the BIOS, SSD performance and the new SATA3 6G controller are also tested.

Conclusion: The M4A89GTD PRO USB3 has an extensive and tweakable BIOS, core unlocking is possible and there is an overclock switch. A perfect platform for Phenom II and upcoming 6-core Thuban CPUs. SATA 6G/s will give SSDs the necessary bandwidth and with RAID it will be as fast as can be. Power consumption idle 77 watts full load 153 watts.

Overclocking: A Phenom II 965 was running stable @ 4 GHz with the vCore voltage set to 1.55v and a multiplier of 20. the air-cooler used was an OCZ Vendetta 2.

Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra, Everest, 3D Mark 2006, 3DMark Vantage, Handbrake, Crysis WarHEAD, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Resident Evil 5, Far Cry 2.

march 8 2010

neoseeker reviewed the ECS A785GM-AD3

This mobo was compared to the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, ASUS M4A785TD-EVO and the ECS A785GM-M.

Conclusion: This mainboard does not support processors with a TDP of more than 95W and has no onboard HDMI output, on the other hand it has power, reset and CMOS clear buttons. The A785GM-M would be a much better choice ......more

march 5 2010

overclockersclub reviewed the ECS A890GXM-A

The ECS A890GXM-A was compared to the ECS A785GM-AD3, ECS A785GM-M, Sapphire PA-AM3RS785G, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P and GA-MA785GMT-UD2H. USB3 and SATA3 devices were not tested. There are also no test results from the new Radeon 4290 IGP.

Conclusion: The new implementation of the 890GX/SB850 was very good, with the USB3 and SATA3 working perfectly, this mobo is also ready for the future as far as the new Phenom II X6 six core processors are concerned. Other things that need to be mentioned are 5u Gold contacts, the Qooltech III cooler to cool the chipset and the 'new' DisplayPort connector. When it came to overclocking, the A890GXM-A crashed.

Overclocking: overclockersclub tried to overclock this mobo using two different BIOS versions and both had an instant system crash after raising the multiplier. This is the second board fromECS that refused to overclock an AMD Phenom II X4 955, while it overclocked on many other boards successfully. The 890GX chipset shows up as 785GX/SB750 in CPU-Z.

Benchmarks: Apophysis, WinRAR, Office 2007, POV Ray 3.7, PcMark Vantage, Sandra 2009 Professional, ScienceMark, CineBench 10, HD Tune, Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Call of Duty: World at War, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, 3DMark06 Professional, 3DMark Vantage Professional.

march 3 2010

techreport reviewed the Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H

This is actually an AMD 890GX integrated graphics chipset test where the GA-890GPA-UD3H was compared to the Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3. A Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 was also added in the test results to see where the Intel platform stands.

Conclusion: The the UD3H has a comparatively high power consumption, USB 3.0 performance was flaky at best and CPU utilization was a lot higher than the Asus M4A89GTD.

Overclocking: Techreport did some Base Clock overclocking with an Athlon II X4 635, they reached 280MHz which theoretically could OC the X4 625 to 4GHz.

Benchmarks: CPU-Z 1.41, The Panorama Factory 5.3, Stream 5.8, TrueCrypt 6.3, x264 HD benchmark, 7-Zip, Cinebench 11, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, DiRT 2, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, HD Tach 3, Intel IOMeter, RightMark Audio Analyzer 6, CyberLink PowerDVD 9.

march 1 2010

legitreviews reviewed the ASUS P7H57D-V EVO

This mainboard was compared to the Intel DH55TC.

Conclusion: The wasP7H57D-V EVO extremely stable during extreme overclocking and has about the same results as the P55 based ASUS P7P55D Premium. legitreviews thinks the price is to high compared to MSI H57M-ED65 and the Gigabyte GA-H57-USB3. The power consumption was 58 watts idle and 111 watts full load.

Overclocking: A core i5 661 was OCed @4454.9MHz the vXcore was set to 1.3v and the BCLK 171.3MHz. A Cooler Master V10 air cooler was used during testing.

Benchmarks: iTunes9, Video Encoding x264, Colin McRea Dirt 2, Stalker Call of Pripyat, Cinebench, Sisoft Sandra, 3D Mark Vantage, PC Mark Vantage.