Conclusion:

The reviewer wouldn't recommend the BIOSTAR TA890GXB HD if you are planning any heavy overclocking, the BIOS was a bit tough to navigate, the Voltage Configuration page for example was hard to find. This is a mainboard designed for the mainstream market, for people who are looking for a board that will support the latest processors from AMD and has integrated graphics without breaking the bank, at the time of the review it was the cheapest 890GX chipset mobo on the market and gives you value for money.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X4 910e had a stable OC of 3536MHz, app. 500MHz short of what this processor is capable of with some other mainboards.

Benchmarks:

superPi, 3D Mark Vantage, Cinebench, DiRT 2, H.A.W.X, PC mark vantage, Sisoft Sandra, x264 HD. In the gaming benches the HIS Radeon HD5870 was used, the Radeon HD 4290 IGP was tested with 3D Mark Vantage.

Compared to:

MSI 785GM-E65, ASRock 890GX Extreme3.

Test Setup:

• RAM: 2X2GB DDR3 Patriot Sector 5
• HDD: WD Caviar Black 640gb
• Graphics Card: HIS Radeon HD5870
• Air cooler: ThermalTake SpinQ VT
• PSU: Corsair HX1000

Conclusion:

This mobo is an entry-level motherboard, that only provides the basic features. The board performed slightly under the expectations of the reviewers, in every benchmark it was slower than the ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO. The layout of this well constructed motherboard is clean and organized. The onboard reset and power buttons add to the functionality and the SATA3 ports are ready for upcoming fast SSDs. On the other hand there are only only 4 USB ports on the back panel, 5.1 Channel HD Audio instead of 7.1 Channel support and no sideport memory. This motherboard is the least expensive of all AMD-890GX products available.

Overclocking:

An Athlon-II X3-445 was OCed @3.9GHz, vCore 1.6v, BCLK 245MHz. Automatic overclocking resulted in 3.4GHz.

Compared to:

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO.

Benchmarks:

PC Mark Vantage, Lavalys Everest Ultimate, Maxon Cinebench R11.5 64 bit, Passmark Performance Test, SiSoft Sandra , Resident Evil 5 Benchmark. In the gaming benchmarks the Onboard ATI Radeon HD 4290 was tested.

Test Setup:

• RAM: 4GB DDR3 Patriot Gamer
• SSD: OCZ Agility 30GB
• HDD: 1.5TB SEAGATE Barracuda
• DVD: ASUS DRW-24B1ST
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Conclusion:

This mobo is a great choice for someone who wants to build an inexpensive 6 core system. Overclocking is excellent and it can also be used as a basis for an inexpensive Home Theatre PC option. The HD 4290 IGP can only be used for for casual gaming.

Overclocking:

There is a dedicated page for the BIOS and overclocking, allthough some OC features are explained, you won't find any overclocking results.

Benchmarks:

Sisoft Sandra, x264, SYSmark 2007, PC mark Vantage, 3D mark Vantage, WPRIME, Specview 10, CPUbench.

Compared to:

ASRock M3A790GXH128, ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, ECS 890GXM-A Black Edition, Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5, Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H, Gigabyte MA-790FXT-UD5P, MSI 790GM-E65, MSI 790GX-G65 and MSI 890GXM-G65.