MSI 790X motherboard..

[trog100]

because i want to C/F my 3870 i just swopped to one of these new 790x amd boards..

the trouble is it isnt as good as my very entry level Abit an52 board with the 520 nvidia chipset.. i assumed the abit board wasnt that good just because its entry level and cheap..

but for a single card solution i would go back to it instantly..

possibly a bios revision might improve the 790 board i hope so.. but i aint overly impressed with it at the moment..

trog

 

[von kain]

i will advice to wait a while maybe a bios update will vanish most of your problems


von kain.

 

[wiak]

sure most problems will be fixed with a bios update
gigabyte got a nice 790X CF board its a bit more expensive but you get most of the top end stuff

am getting a 790FX gigabyte board with phenom and another Gladiator to

 

[btarunr]

You really won't notice any performance improvement over previous boards (AM2) because you continue to use the older Windsor 6000+ processor that has the Hyper-Transport 2.0 (2000 MT/s) bus. The AMD 790 series chipset is best suited for the newer Phenom series processors where there's a newer HT 3.0 system bus.

The nForce 520, 520 LE, 500 SLI, 560, 560 SLI are said to be newer additions to the nForce 500 series lineup for the AMD platform based on a newer low-power fabrication process that runs cooler and lesser power-consuming. They compete head-on with the AMD 690 series chipset and really do offer better performance for the simple reason being the chipset consists of a single chip unlike the AMD chipset that's split into northbridge + southbridge and a A-Link (which is simply a PCIe X4 link) connecting the bridges. The AMD SB600 southbridge is simply a PCIe x4 device that connects to the northbridge. AMD never made a southbridge after that, which already is about two years old. Even in nForce chipsets that do consist of NB+SB (such as 590 SLI, GeForce 6150 + 420 MCP, etc), the bridges are connected using the much faster Hyper-Transport 1600 MT/s 32-bit width bus that's ferociously fast.

So, unless you're using a Phenom processor, buying a AMD 790 series chipset-based board is useless (if you don't plan for ATI Crossfire). Even then, you have the AMD 580X based boards for Crossfire.

 

[trog100]

phenom aside the abit 520 board p-isses all over the 790 one for a single card solution and it was £20 cheaper.. for an entry level board its spot on..

the 520 ran all four ram slots full at cas 4.. the 790 wont even manage two i have had to slow it down to cas 5..

had to slow my cpu down from 3350 to 3300 to maintain stabilty.. i dont think the bios core voltage increase from 1.35 to 1.4 is taking..

two of the four sata slots are covered up by the one 3870 card.. the four slot board looks like it will suffer the same problem or worse..

there is a new 1.01 bios available i have it but the silly msi live upate thing tells me it dosnt exist and i cant be arsed to flash the old way..

i have no decent hardware windows monitors.. spoilt by abit boards no doubt here..

and heres silly me thinking an amd board might work better with an amd cpu.. he he he

still it might get a phenom in it one day.. not yet thow.. he he

trog

ps.. no decent fan control either.. basically i have a noisier system which goes slower..

 

[nflesher87]

please, elaborate more trog! I've been waiting til these come in stock to buy one but I'm definitely having second thoughts now!

 

[btarunr]

Well, if you're not using AMD Phenom and no multi-GPU either, the most efficient board at an awesome price is the abit AN52. An absolute no-nonsense board. No second-thoughts.

 

[trog100]

please, elaborate more trog! I've been waiting til these come in stock to buy one but I'm definitely having second thoughts now!

well i loaded it all up with hardware switched it on and noting happened except all the fans fired up.. no error bleeps nothing.. there dosnt seem to be any error messages which is a new one on me..

this turned out to be a memory thing.. with only two slots in use it fired up and went.. i upped the memory voltage in the bios and it fired up with all four slots full..

basically i hope a new bios will cure some of its memory incompatibility problems..

i miss decent fan (windows) control big time.. at present i have no way of controlling my case fan speeds based on system temps..

i also miss not being able to check mobo voltages in windows..

dont get me wrong i think i have been spoilt by abit boards which come loaded with windows control and check everything stuff..

i also think that if i had not have been using the entry level Abit 520 board first i would not be so annoyed with this one..

performance wise i have lost 10% of my memory bandwidth.. 250 points of a 3dmark score 10950-ish down from 11150-ish..

i only have the 520 board to compare with.. no others.. but lets say if i didnt want to use more than one card i would not recommend the 790 over the abit 520..

trog

 

[trog100]

Well, if you're not using AMD Phenom and no multi-GPU either, the most efficient board at an awesome price is the abit AN52. An absolute no-nonsense board. No second-thoughts.

yep i would have to second that..

trog

 

[nflesher87]

this is all really dissapointing, I really thought the new chipset would have more overclocking potential...
do you guys have a better suggestion that would still give me the benefit of crossfire? I was really looking forward to crossfire X capability, but I suppose I could settle for just crossfire if the board is going to have much better capabilities than this

 

[btarunr]

this is all really dissapointing, I really thought the new chipset would have more overclocking potential...
do you guys have a better suggestion that would still give me the benefit of crossfire? I was really looking forward to crossfire X capability, but I suppose I could settle for just crossfire if the board is going to have much better capabilities than this

Well, the most sane Crossfire solution for all those non-Phenom AMD users would be the ASUS M2R32-MVP based on the AMD 580X Crossfire. The BIOS of this board and the fine-tuning is offers, and for its price, you'd have only one word: bravo!

32-lanes of PCIe, 16 full lanes per video-card is an a$$-load of bandwidth to play with. And because that's synchronous PCIe clock (32 lanes come from the northbridge unlike in 590 SLI where the NB and SB provide 16 lanes each) which implies you can fool around with the PCIe clocks with ease. Some users are reported to have achieved CAS 3T in DDR2 800.

Image courtesy: ASUS.