There was an issue with the audio out, it would sometimes report that it was unplugged, this had to be fixed in software. Overclocking hit a surprisingly 318 MHz BCLK. Chip selection and features MSI implemented on the board are above average. MSI designed a very good board, at a good price point.

Overclocking:

With 'bus overclocking' the HTT bus was OCed @ an impressive 318 MHz. OC Genie overclocked the HTT to 230 MHz, and as a result an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T was OCed @ 3.68 GHz, the vCore @ 1.336v.

Test Setup:

• Computer Case : Silverstone Raven 002
• Graphics Card : AMD Radeon HD5870 Reference Card
• HDD : 2 x WD Caviar Black 1TB
• Memory : 4GB OCZ Platinum DDR-3 1600MHz
• OS : Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• PSU : Corsair TX750W

Benchmarks:

HD Tach USB2, HD Tach USB3, SiSoft Sandra 2010,HD Tach Hard Drive, 3D Mark Vantage, Cinebench 11.5.

Compared To:

MSI 890GXM-G65

The MSI 890FXA-GD70 is an amazing board, with good looks and a well implemented layout and overall design, the overclocking potential of the board was very good. This mainboard was one of the most enjoyable AMD based motherboards the reviewers worked with lately. This board is future proof and a powerful tool for the AMD hardware enthusiast and it also includes native SATA3 and NEC's USB3 controller.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II x6 1055T CPU was overclocked @3.9GHz, FSB 360MHz. The 2x2GB DDR3 Patriot VIPER PVV34G2000LLK memory was running at 1440MHz and the water cooling used was a Koolance 345 CPU water block and a tri-fan radiator.

Compared to:

Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3, Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7, MSI P55-GD80, ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution.

Benchmarks:

Microphone Port Testing, Drive Performance, Iometer, Network Utilization Tests, Sisoft Sandra, HiperPi, wPrime, Audio Subjective Listening, DU Meter, Multimedia Benchmarks, DivX Converter 7.0, LAME, WinRAR, Videora IPod Converter, TMPGEnc 4.0 XPRESS, Lost Planet, Call of Juarez, Quake 4, Crysis, Far Cry 2.

Software reviewed:

MSI Control Center, AMD OverDrive, BIOS.

Conclusion:

With CrossFireX, the 890FX chipset offers twice the bandwidth of the 890GX or 880G boards, unlike the 890GX, there's no onboard graphics, but you'll get more USB ports, dual NICs, OC Genie controls and an external CMOS reset button. There's no floppy controller and minimal voltage monitoring capabilities. Although the 890FXA-GD70 is a full-featured board, you are paying a premium over other similar competing products from ASUS, Gigabyte and BIOSTAR, the reviewer gave it a Silver Seal of Approval.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X6 1090T X6 BE reached a 4GHz stable overclock, the air cooler was a Kingwin XT-1264.

Compared to:

This board was not compared to another moterboard, instead it was compared to a Phenom II X4 965.

Benchmarks:

Cinebench, PC mark vantage, SuperPi.

Test Setup:

• Video Card: Radeon HD 5850
• Memory: 4Gb DDR3 1600MHz Crucial Ballistix Tracer
• SSD: 128Gb Crucial C300 RealSSD
• HDD: 1Tb WD Caviar Black
• Optical drive: Optiarc 24x DVD+/-RW
• PSU: SilverStone Decathlon DA750
• Computer Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition
• OS: Windows 7 x64

Conclusion:

At no point the performance was limited by the board, but by the rest of my components, like the memory and processor. Using the same Kingwin Dock Master and a Samsung 1TB HDD for USB3 testing there was a 68MB/s higher burst speed when compared to the 890GXM-G65.

Overclocking:

A Phenom II X6 1055T was overclocked @ 4.2GHz running stable. With LN2 testing 5500MHz was reached.

Benchmarks:

HD Tach, 3D Mark 2005, 3D Mark Vantage, Cinebench, Lavalys Everest Ultimate, wPrime.

Compared to:

MSI 890GXM-G65

Test Setup:

• Memory: 4gb DDR3 Crucial D9JNL
• Grapics Card: HD 5870 @ 1000/1230MHz
• Power supply: OCZ 1000w
• Air Cooler: CoolIT ECO A.L.C.
• Liquid Nitrogen: Dragon F1EE for LN2 testing

Conclusion:

This mobo has a good PCB layout and many features including DrMos. Core unlocking is also available for X2 and X3 CPUs. The PCIe slots support the x16 dual mode or you can have a quad CrossFireX in x8/x8/x8/x8 mode. The USB 3 and SATA3 in combination with raid also needs to be mentioned. This mainboard is not cheap, but you'll get value for money with a great featureset and high levels of performance.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE was OCed @4GHz.

Compared to:

Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 and AsRock 890FX Deluxe 3.

Test Setup:

• RAM: 2X2GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1600MHz
• Display: LaCie 730 30 Inch
• SSD: Intel 160GB
• HDD: WD Raptor 300GB
• Air Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P SE14
• PSU: Enermax 1250W Revolution
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Benchmarks:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Handbrake, TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress, KitGuru PS Bench, 3ds MAX, @Power Consumption, Crysis: Warhead, DiRT 2, PC mark vantage. In the gaming benchmarks a Sapphire HD5850 Toxic Edition graphics card was used.