990FX Motherboard Roundup with Thuban and Bulldozer – A Second Wind for ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Biostar
by Ian Cutress on April 5, 2012 11:00 AM ESTGigabyte 990FXA-UD5 In The Box
Gigabyte packages of late have often been criticized for being bleak and uninteresting. This is typically because Gigabyte employ the model of trying to hit the price point for as cheaply as possible – the extra kit in the box costs, and if Gigabyte can hit a channel board in the next price bracket down, they feel it is beneficial to the consumer. With that being said, this bundle has:
Driver CD
User’s Manual
IO Shield
4 x locking SATA cables
3-way fixed SLI bridge
A long non-fixed SLI bridge
Image Courtesy of Newegg
Board Features
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 | |
Price | Link to Newegg |
Size | ATX |
CPU Interface | AM3+ |
CPU Support | AMD FX/Phenom II/Athlon II |
Chipset | AMD 990FX |
Base Clock Frequency | Auto, 200 MHz to 500 Mhz |
Core Voltage | Normal, -600 mV to +600 mV |
CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, x7 to x35 |
DRAM Voltage | Normal, 1.025 V to 2.135 V |
DRAM Command Rate | Auto, 1T or 2T |
Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB Up to Dual Channel Support for DDR3, 1066-2000 MHz, |
Expansion Slots |
3 x PCIe Gen2 x16 (x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8) 2 x PCIe Gen2 x4 1 x PCIe Gen2 x1 1 x PCI |
Onboard SATA/RAID |
6 x SATA 6 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 2 x SATA 6 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1 (Marvell 88SE9172) 2 x eSATA 6 Gbps |
Onboard |
8 x SATA 6 Gbps (6 SB950, 2 Controller) 4 x Fan Headers 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x S/PDIF Output Header 3 x USB 2.0 Headers 1 x USB 3.0 Headers 1 x IEEE1394 Header 1 x Serial Port Header 1 x Clear CMOS Header 1 x TPM Header |
Onboard LAN | Realtek 8111E |
Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC889 |
Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector |
Fan Headers |
1 x CPU Fan Header 2 x SYS Fan Headers 1 x PWR Fan Headers |
IO Panel |
1 x Keyboard/Mouse PS2 Port 1 x Optical SPDIF Output 2 x eSATA 3 Gbps 1 x Gigabit Ethernet 2 x USB 3.0 8 x USB 2.0 Audio Outputs |
BIOS Version | F7h |
Warranty Period | 3 Years |
To keep costs down Gigabyte has gone with a Realtek Audio/NIC combination which is often sold to manufacturers at a discount as a combo. As always, Gigabyte has included a TPM module header on board for those that require that functionality. What Gigabyte tend to skip out on is a pair of power/reset buttons, or onboard Clear CMOS button rather than pins. I would like to see those rolled out over the range if at all possible.
Software
Where certain other manufacturers have increased and improved their software over the years, Gigabyte has essentially kept to the same set of software for a good while with minimal updates. If you discount the 3D BIOS offerings of X79, all we have to play with is, for the most part, EasyTune – Gigabyte’s monitoring and overclocking center.
EasyTune6
EasyTune takes on a slightly different look if you use a Thuban processor or a Bulldozer processor, especially when it comes to overclocking. The Thuban does not get a set of easy overclock buttons:
In terms of functionality, there is not much we have not seen before from previous Gigabyte outings. Overclocking is done via the base frequency or the multiplier (and depending on the processor, this may work or not as the case may be), and fan controls are a major issue when it comes to Gigabyte products:
From the operating system, this is all we get for fan control of all the controllable headers on board – one little graph with two points. This is rather disappointing, especially when other manufacturers splash out on some more expensive fan headers to get the control in the hands of the user (and then put in the software to back it up).
As EasyTune also features a hardware monitor which polls the various sensors on board for voltages and temperatures every three seconds, this caused issue with a little of our testing, especially in our DPC test. These sensor readings take CPU priority, and hence the DPC results were often 20x bigger than would be reasonable for performing audio on the board with any degree of accuracy. There is a simple solution though – just close ET6.
@BIOS
Gigabyte also has a tool for updating the BIOS. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and is needed from time to time if a big enough change is performed from BIOS version to BIOS version.
Easy Energy Saver
In an effort to appear ‘green’, motherboard vendors are now applying software to their products in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the motherboard. In the simplest terms, these software packages attempt to reduce the voltage of the processor at all the load states in order to save energy. The more intelligent systems will also look at other components to save energy, either by power gating through software, or adjusting operational voltages. This is all at the limit on the processor you have at hand (as some will work happily at lower voltages), and at the potential expense of stability. For Gigabyte, this comes in the form of Easy Energy Saver:
Using the ‘intelligent’ driver MOSFETs onboard, they can be controlled and the CPU can be throttled to save power. As a person interested in stability and performance, personally I would shun away from these types of software, but for the more energy conscious, they are here to be used.
57 Comments
View All Comments
phys1cs - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Spamming affiliate links, I see.R3MF - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
"The third generation FX processor, codename Steamroller, is still reported (not confirmed) to use AM3+, meaning that there are still quite a few years left in this platform when taking the AMD route."If this is true then i simply cannot believe that AMD will continue on socket AM3+ without a chipset that supports PCIe 3.0!
Where, when, and what will the 1090FX chipset arrive?
SilthDraeth - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
This seems to be an ok roundup of AMD boards.However, how do the latest Windows 7 tweaks increase the performance of the Bulldozer? Can we get a before and after benchmark based on Win 7 and or Win 8 (beta) optimizations?
I was hoping we would get that information. Also, how does it compare to similarly priced Intel offerings?
IanCutress - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Thank you for your comment. I didn't perform comparisons as Anand did a comprehensive look at the scheduling updates here:http://www.anandtech.com/show/5448/the-bulldozer-s...
(Also reviewing five boards and writing 20,000 words about them takes longer than you think!)
If there are any motherboards you would like to see in the future (or particular tests), drop me an email (ian AT anandtech.com) and I will have a look. Obviously I can't take care of every little niche test that everyone wants, otherwise we'd only get one board a month out for review, but I'll do what I can!
Ian
SilthDraeth - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Thank you for the link. That is what I wanted.StevoLincolnite - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I noticed your Thuban was hitting 60'C+So I was just wondering if you took the Thubans thermal bug into account on those readings? On my old 1090T and 1045T I had to have a 13'c offset to get a correct thermal reading.
sumitlian - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Temperature related problem have long been rectified in C3 stepping of Denab CPUs and in Thuban as well. There is no fault in temperature sensor anymore in our CPUs.Only C2 rev. or earlier rev. AMD CPUs suffered from this issue.
Download and Read:
"Revision Guide for Family 10h CPU"
ExarKun333 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
More to life than gaming on your PC. If you read the article, you could see how terrible the non-gaming benchmarks are for 'only' a Intel 4 and 6-core vs the 8-core AMD. Fanboi much?blazeoptimus - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I bought an MSI 990FX-GD80 board a couple of months ago and was looking for a review like this one at the time. I would have loved the info you brought up here and I hope it will help others looking into the available 990FX boards.I went with the MSI board since it seemed to hit a sweet spot on features, price (newegg was offering $20 off which put it to $169) and performance. I also went with a Zosma processor since it seemed to hit the price elbow and had the most unlocking potential. I've been very happy with the experience thus far. I've been able to unlock the 2 additional processors and have pushed the clock to 3600mhz (stock is 3k). My next push will be to see if I can hit the aggressive clocks listed in this article.
Thanks again for the write up. I'm a long time reader and frequently use the information in these reviews to make hardware decisions.
Taft12 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Very comprehensive, thank you Ian!Of course now that you've exhausted so much energy on this review, the 1090FX chipset is right around the corner alongside the 2nd gen FX CPUs.
Such is life for a desktop hardware reviewer!