october 23 2010 review by overclockersclub

This mainboard is well thought out and has all of the features you will need including USB3 and SATA3 for the next generation of SSDs. It was stable throughout all of the testing, even surpassing the 890GX board a few times. It also supports AMD six core processors and 2GHz memory speeds. Automatic core unlocking is available in the BIOS. The second PCIe slot limited to x4 and there's a poorly placed IDE slot.

Compared To:

ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3, Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P

Benchmarks: 3D Mark Vantage, Apophysis, Batman Arkham Asylum, Bibble 5, Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2, Cinebench 10 & 11.5, Far Cry 2, HDTune 3, Excel Number Crunch, POVRay, Sisoft Sandra XII, WinRAR.

Test Setup:

• CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 965
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE
• RAM : Mushkin 996744 DDR3 1600MHz
• Graphics Card : XFX Radeon HD 5870
• PSU : Mushkin 800w Modular
• HDD : 1 x Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive : LG Supermulti DVD-R/W
• OS: Windows 7 Professional x64

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X4 965 was POCed @ 3.917GHz.

october 1 2010 review by rbmods

This mobo has all possible ports on the back panel and it was rock solid during the overclocking tests.

Benchmarks:

CPU Arithmetic, CPU Multicore, CPU Multimedia, PC mark vantage x64, Winrar, SuperPi.

Test Setup:

• Memory : Patriot 2x2GB DDR3 PC3-19200 2400MHz
• Power Supply : Corsair TX950W
• Processor : AMD Phenom 2 1090T
• SSD : Crucial 64GB
• Video Card : Asus GeForce 9800GT

Compared To:

ASUS Crosshair III Formula.

Overclocking:

The baseclock was OCed @240MHz.

august 12 2010 review by guru3d

Conclusion: This mobo gives you value for money. If you like to build a good and decent mid-range PC, then buy a mainboard like this, the reviewers would not recommend Crossfire on this motherboard as one adapter will only have a x4 lane configuration. The AHCI performance was not so good, but regular SATA/IDE mode performance really is fast, for AHCI you'll have to wait for a driver update. The overclocking performance was good, and you get extras like core unlocking and a MemOk feature.

Overclocking:

The reviewer reached 4.1 GHz with an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor, stable with a BCLK of 250MHz. There is also a dedicated page for the AMD Overdrive. Turbo Key II resulted in a stable overclock @ 3712 MHz, the memory however was clocked down to 928 MHz.

Benchmarks:

SiSoft Sandra, Everest, 3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, Handbrake, Medialink Espresso, CineBENCH 11.5, Crysis WarHEAD, Brothers in Arms - Hell's Highway, Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5, Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Test Setup:

• CPU Cooler : OCZ Vendetta
• Display : Dell 3007WFP
• Graphics Cards : Radeon HD 5870 1GB
• Memory : 2x2GB DDR3 1333 MHz Corsair Dominator CAS9
• OS : Windows 7 x64
• PSU : BFG 1200 EX Watt

Compared to: In the USB3 and SATA3 tests his mobo was compared to the ASUS Rampage III Extreme, ASUS 890GX, ASUS C4F 890FX, MSI 890FXA-GD70, MSI 890GX and Gigabyte GA-890G.

august 7 2010 review by insidehw

This board is a full ATX motherboard that has lots of of additional functions like USB3 ports, two of which are present on the motherboard and are controlled by a NEC chip. Furthermore this mobo is equipped with a good cooling system, it also has eSATA as well as Firewire, an 8-pin CPU connector and the VRM has eight phases for the CPU.

Conclusion:

This mobo has a better voltage unit, better cooling, CrossFireX capabilities, USB3 ports, more connectors etc. than the Biostar TA880G HD. On the other hand, those who care little for all these advanced features, such as eSATA, Firewire etc. will be perfectly happy with the cheaper Biostar.

There's not much difference between the 890GX and 880G chipsets, The 890GX has the ATI Radeon HD4290 and the 880G the Radeon HD4250. The only difference between the two IGP's is the GPU core clock, the 4250 is clocked somewhat lower. The number of PCI Express lines is the ame as with the AMD 890GX.

Overclocking: A Phenom II X6 1090T was OCed @ 4130. The Turbo Key 2 function hasn't performed very well with the test CPU. With an old AMD Phenom II 965 BE CPU, the Turbo Key 2 function performed as expected and it raised the CPU clock from 3400 MHz to 3670 MHz, the memory clock is even reduced when needed, to increase system instability.

Test Setup:

• CPU : AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
• 4GB DDR3 1333MHz TakeMS
• Western Digital 5000AAKS 500 GBCPU Cooler : Cooler Master V10 cooler
• PSU : Cooler Master Ultimate 1250W
• OS : Windows 7 x64

Compared to:

Biostar TA880G HD

Benchmarks:

WinRAR, 7-Zip, x.264 encoding, Blender, Cinebench R11.5 x64, Everest 5.5, 3D Mark 2006, World in Conflict.

july 21 2010 review by benchmarkreviews

Conclusion:

The performance of this mobo was excellent with easy access to overclocking thanks to the 8+2 power supply. The next generation of SSD drives will probably benefit from the the SATA3 capabilities and the USB3 performance is great. The Turbo Unlocker and Core Unlocker with the 'right' CPU could boost performance dramatically. Turbo Unlocker can also give an extra boost to a Black Edition CPU. The appearance of this motherboard is very nice and construction quality was excellent. This board has everything a budget enthusiast want, except for CrossFireX x16.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II 555 Black Edition was overclocked @4017.9 20x200.9, the air Cooler used was a CoolerMaster Hyper Z600.

Compared to:

ASUS P7P55D-E PRO, ASUS M4A79T Deluxe.

Test Setup:

• RAM: 4GB DDR3 1600MHz OCZ Black Edition
• SSD: OCZ Summit 60 GB
• HDD: WD Velociraptor 150GB
• DVD: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A-OB
• computer Case: SilverStone Fortress FT01 SST-FT01B-W Gaming
• Power supply: Antec Neo-HE500 Modular ATX12V V2.2 500Watt
• VGA Power supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Power Express 650Watt
• Display: SOYO 24" Widescreen
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate Version 6.1 (Build 7600)

Benchmarks:

EVEREST Ultimate, PC Mark Vantage, CINEBENCH 11.5 x64, Passmark Performance Test, Crysis, Aliens vs. Predator. In the gaming benchmarks an ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 ATI Radeon HD 5870 was used, the Radeon HD 4250 IGP was not tested.