Advent of the Dragon - ECS A890GXM-A Motherboard Review
Just a few weeks ago, the announcement of the new AMD chipset - 890GX. The OCClub.ru team is ready to share with you the impressions of communicating with the AMD 890GX - ECS A890GXM-A motherboard. This product belongs to the Black Edition series, which should give us a guarantee of quality and high performance.
For a long time I did not have to meet ECS products on the Russian market. I hope that the release of the new chipset will help break the stereotypes of most users and prove that the ECS 890GXM-A motherboard is worthy of taking its place on your computer.
On the front side of the package is a list of supported technologies and processors. The AM3 socket motherboard supports AMD Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron processors, and also announced support for the new six-core AMD processors, the announcement of which will take place soon.
On the reverse side, the technical specifications of the board are described in more detail:
- AMD890GX + SB850
- HT 3.0
- Dual DDR3 1800 (OC)
- Dual Gigabit LAN
- 3x PCI-E X16
- SATA III
- 8-channel HD Audio
The 890GX chipset was the first to be introduced out of eight AMD chipset line. Its distinctive feature is the presence of integrated graphics, which we are informed by the letter G in the chipset abbreviation - Integrated Graphics Product. And the combination of this chipset with the SB850 south bridge allows users to get better performance of the integrated graphics core, the presence of two gigabit network adapters, and most importantly - support for SATA III.
The work of the chipset is clearly demonstrated on the above slide.
The motherboard is positioned in the price range of 100-150 USD, so do not count on an abundant supply package. Inside you will find everything you need - a user manual, installation instructions, driver CDs, 4 SATA cables, as well as a plug into the case.
The rear panel includes connectors: VGA, DVI, HDMI, Display Port, 6x USB, 1x eSATA, firewire, 2x Gigabit Ethernet LAN and built-in 8.1 sound. There is also a small pink button to reset the BIOS. The disadvantages include the lack of a PS / 2 connector, because of which I had to go broke on a USB keyboard.) The
board has a fairly massive power cooling system. This was not done in vain, because during work I could not hold my fingers on the radiator for more than five seconds. From this we can conclude that the temperature of the batteries rises above the mark of 60-70 degrees Celsius. But on the other hand, this is due to the integrated graphics core, so you should not be surprised at the heating of the board.
The color scheme of the board is selected quite well. Two DDR3 memory slots in red and yellow remind us of how to properly set the memory bars to activate the dual-channel mode. Let me remind you that, unlike Intel platforms, memory sticks are not important in the near or far slots they are inserted. For dual-channel mode, it is necessary to set memory bars in slots of the same color.
On the motherboard there are 5 SATA III ports that can provide data transfer speeds up to 6Gb / s. One of the ports is directed up, but when connected, it does not block the video card with a dual-slot cooling system.
The SB850 south bridge is hidden from our view by an aluminum radiator. The radiator design is typical, and there was no point in inventing something new. The heating of the south bridge is quite low, so the installed radiator is enough.
The board contains three expansion slots PCI-E x16, two PCI-E 1x, a standard PCI slot and orange is marked PCI-E x4. When installing one video card, the slot will work in PCI-E x16 mode, when installing two cards - PCI-E 8x + 8x, when installing three cards - 8x + 8x + 4x.
Test bench:
- AMD Phenom II processor 42 TWKR Black Edition
- Xigmatek Achilles cooling
- PowerColor HD5870 video card
- 2x2Gb DDR3 RAM Corsair Dominator GT 2000MHz CL8
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500Gb hard drive
- Enermax Revolution 1250W power supply
The processor was overclocked to a frequency of 3.6 GHz. The memory worked at a frequency of 1600 MHz with timings CL7 7-7-21 1T at a voltage of 1.6V.
Results:
Super Pi1M is a popular processor benchmark that calculates the number of Pi up to 1 million decimal places by the CPU. 19.329 s - for so much our system coped with the task.
The WinRar archiving test puts a heavy load on the memory controller, which very well allows you to check the system for stability. Result - 2350 Kb / s
CrystalMark - a comprehensive system benchmark, it reflects the performance of the entire system. The result is 208212 points. For the AMD platform, I did not see more results in this test.
Well, slowly move on to the weaknesses. The read / write speed of memory on Intel platforms with their three-channel controllers is still far from AMD systems.
3DMark Vantage has always been Intel's patrimony, so you should not be surprised at the low result in this test.
In 3DMark06, the result is quite natural. A little less than 20k parrots, but overclocking a video card can easily overcome this milestone.
But in real gaming benchmarks the situation is completely different. The average FPS in Heaven 2 (the only benchmark with DirectX11 support) was 46.3. On a similar top-end system from Intel, you can get about the same result. Just calculate the cost of both platforms.)
Well, just a couple of tests of the integrated graphics. On the Radeon HD4290, you can safely play games of 2005 with maximum settings in the resolution of 1280x1024.
And in current applications, the integrated core is very difficult.
Although, I think that you will agree with me that no one plans to play on such a graphics core in Crysis or Dirt2.
Conclusion
According to the results, it is worth noting that the ECS product turned out to be productive and practically does not cause complaints. The only drawback that can stop the user when buying this board may be the price. Judging by European sites, the cost of the board will be from 100 euros, which is undoubtedly expensive for a motherboard with integrated graphics. However, in Russia I have already found several 890GX boards on sale, and they cost even more. So it’s too early to talk about prices. But in terms of functionality and equipment, the ECS motherboard is doing well, so from the OCClub.ru team we award the board the “Editors' Choice” award
For a long time I did not have to meet ECS products on the Russian market. I hope that the release of the new chipset will help break the stereotypes of most users and prove that the ECS 890GXM-A motherboard is worthy of taking its place on your computer.
On the front side of the package is a list of supported technologies and processors. The AM3 socket motherboard supports AMD Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron processors, and also announced support for the new six-core AMD processors, the announcement of which will take place soon.
On the reverse side, the technical specifications of the board are described in more detail:
- AMD890GX + SB850
- HT 3.0
- Dual DDR3 1800 (OC)
- Dual Gigabit LAN
- 3x PCI-E X16
- SATA III
- 8-channel HD Audio
The 890GX chipset was the first to be introduced out of eight AMD chipset line. Its distinctive feature is the presence of integrated graphics, which we are informed by the letter G in the chipset abbreviation - Integrated Graphics Product. And the combination of this chipset with the SB850 south bridge allows users to get better performance of the integrated graphics core, the presence of two gigabit network adapters, and most importantly - support for SATA III.
The work of the chipset is clearly demonstrated on the above slide.
The motherboard is positioned in the price range of 100-150 USD, so do not count on an abundant supply package. Inside you will find everything you need - a user manual, installation instructions, driver CDs, 4 SATA cables, as well as a plug into the case.
The rear panel includes connectors: VGA, DVI, HDMI, Display Port, 6x USB, 1x eSATA, firewire, 2x Gigabit Ethernet LAN and built-in 8.1 sound. There is also a small pink button to reset the BIOS. The disadvantages include the lack of a PS / 2 connector, because of which I had to go broke on a USB keyboard.) The
board has a fairly massive power cooling system. This was not done in vain, because during work I could not hold my fingers on the radiator for more than five seconds. From this we can conclude that the temperature of the batteries rises above the mark of 60-70 degrees Celsius. But on the other hand, this is due to the integrated graphics core, so you should not be surprised at the heating of the board.
The color scheme of the board is selected quite well. Two DDR3 memory slots in red and yellow remind us of how to properly set the memory bars to activate the dual-channel mode. Let me remind you that, unlike Intel platforms, memory sticks are not important in the near or far slots they are inserted. For dual-channel mode, it is necessary to set memory bars in slots of the same color.
On the motherboard there are 5 SATA III ports that can provide data transfer speeds up to 6Gb / s. One of the ports is directed up, but when connected, it does not block the video card with a dual-slot cooling system.
The SB850 south bridge is hidden from our view by an aluminum radiator. The radiator design is typical, and there was no point in inventing something new. The heating of the south bridge is quite low, so the installed radiator is enough.
The board contains three expansion slots PCI-E x16, two PCI-E 1x, a standard PCI slot and orange is marked PCI-E x4. When installing one video card, the slot will work in PCI-E x16 mode, when installing two cards - PCI-E 8x + 8x, when installing three cards - 8x + 8x + 4x.
Test bench:
- AMD Phenom II processor 42 TWKR Black Edition
- Xigmatek Achilles cooling
- PowerColor HD5870 video card
- 2x2Gb DDR3 RAM Corsair Dominator GT 2000MHz CL8
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500Gb hard drive
- Enermax Revolution 1250W power supply
The processor was overclocked to a frequency of 3.6 GHz. The memory worked at a frequency of 1600 MHz with timings CL7 7-7-21 1T at a voltage of 1.6V.
Results:
Super Pi1M is a popular processor benchmark that calculates the number of Pi up to 1 million decimal places by the CPU. 19.329 s - for so much our system coped with the task.
The WinRar archiving test puts a heavy load on the memory controller, which very well allows you to check the system for stability. Result - 2350 Kb / s
CrystalMark - a comprehensive system benchmark, it reflects the performance of the entire system. The result is 208212 points. For the AMD platform, I did not see more results in this test.
Well, slowly move on to the weaknesses. The read / write speed of memory on Intel platforms with their three-channel controllers is still far from AMD systems.
3DMark Vantage has always been Intel's patrimony, so you should not be surprised at the low result in this test.
In 3DMark06, the result is quite natural. A little less than 20k parrots, but overclocking a video card can easily overcome this milestone.
But in real gaming benchmarks the situation is completely different. The average FPS in Heaven 2 (the only benchmark with DirectX11 support) was 46.3. On a similar top-end system from Intel, you can get about the same result. Just calculate the cost of both platforms.)
Well, just a couple of tests of the integrated graphics. On the Radeon HD4290, you can safely play games of 2005 with maximum settings in the resolution of 1280x1024.
And in current applications, the integrated core is very difficult.
Although, I think that you will agree with me that no one plans to play on such a graphics core in Crysis or Dirt2.
Conclusion
According to the results, it is worth noting that the ECS product turned out to be productive and practically does not cause complaints. The only drawback that can stop the user when buying this board may be the price. Judging by European sites, the cost of the board will be from 100 euros, which is undoubtedly expensive for a motherboard with integrated graphics. However, in Russia I have already found several 890GX boards on sale, and they cost even more. So it’s too early to talk about prices. But in terms of functionality and equipment, the ECS motherboard is doing well, so from the OCClub.ru team we award the board the “Editors' Choice” award