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We started a series of Socket AM3 mainboard reviews with Asus M4A78T-Ebased on AMD 790GX chipset. One day we would find a worthy rival for itin Gigabyte’s camp, but this time things are a little different. A number of complicationsthat had been haunting the Asus board right from the beginning made usstart looking for an alternative testbed ASAP. We had to find out ifthe discovered issues were the fault of Asus engineers or were typicalof any Socket AM3 mainboards. We managed to get our hands on GigabyteMA790XT-UD4P based on AMD 790X chipset. In fact, we were testing thetwo mainboards almost simultaneously, replacing them on the testbed, inorder to compare the results side by side. I have to say that it is avery interesting approach to testing, as it answers a lot of questionsthat inevitably pop up when you study a new platform. I will absolutelydo it next time again, and today we would like to offer you a review ofthe Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard.
Package and AccessoriesGigabyteMA790XT-UD4P mainboard is shipped in a small vertical box. It lists thesupported functions, technologies and peculiarities of the product.
The mainboard is wrapped in a plastic bag and all bundled accessories are spread out above it. They are:
- FDD and PATA cables;
- A pair of SATA cables with metal locks and L-shaped connectors and another pair with straight connectors;
- A set of brackets and cables for external Serial ATA devices;
- User’s manual;
- A booklet with brief assembly instructions in 25 (!) languages;
- I/O Shield for case rare panel;
- DVD disk with software and drivers;
- “Gigabyte Powered” logo sticker.
PCB Design and FunctionalityPoorly designed mainboards withevident layout issues have become very rare these days. And this isdefinitely not about Gigabyte mainboards, which are designed by a teamof outstanding engineers. Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P is also no exception tothis rule – it uses classical components layout, has verythought-through design; even the smallest details indicate that thedevelopers care about the user experience a lot.
Alarge “Ultra Durable” inscription on one of the heatsinks reminds us ofa highest quality components used for the eight-phase processor voltageregulator as well as the rest of the PCB. All power connectors are invery convenient spots, there is enough room around the processor socketeven for large cooling solutions, the four DIMM slots can accommodateup to 16GB of DDR3 SDRAM.
Theheatsinks on chipset North Bridges often boast very unique shapes andsophisticated internal design. This time, they had to invent a veryuniquely-shaped heatsink because it was close to the PCI Express slots.
Theheatpipe connects it with the heatsink over processor voltage regulatortransistors. Moreover, the processor voltage regulator circuitry ispretty complex, too.
Even a small heatsink over the AMD SB750 South Bridge doesn’t look common:
There are two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots in the lower part of thePCB. The space between them is made larger than usual, so they can fittwo graphics cards even with very large coolers. If you use only onegraphics card, like the majority of users out there, you should installit into the first teal slot, so that it could work at full speed. Theslots share 16 PCI Express lanes, so two graphics cards will work asx8-x8. Therefore, the second orange connector only has half of the pinsin it. Moreover, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P has three PCI Express x1 and twoPCI slots.
AMDSB750 South Bridge provides support for one PATA connector thatsupports up to two ATA-133/100/66/33 devices and six Serial ATAconnectors. You can also build RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10 and JBODarrays with SATA HDDs. Besides, there is an additional Gigabyte SATA2controller delivering another two SATA ports (purple color) supportingRAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD.
Gigabyte pays special attention to thedocumentation that comes with their boards. There is a lot of usefulinfo in the included user’s manual; the multi-lingual booklet withbrief assembly and installation instructions provides the necessarybasics. The color-coded connectors and explanatory marks on the PCB andinside some connectors also facilitate the assembly process.
There are the following connectors on the back of Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard:
- PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse;
- Opticaland coaxial S/PDIF and six audio-jacks implemented by the high-qualityeight-channel Realtek ALC889A HAD codec with Dolby Home Theater support;
- Two IEEE1394 connectors provided by the additional T.I. TSB43AB23 controller; the third one is laid out as a PCB pin-connector;
- Network RJ45 connector by Gigabit Realtek 8111DL controller;
- Eight USB connectors; the remaining four ports are laid out as pin-connectors.
Thecomponents layout of Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P from the manual will showyou once again how well thought-through the PCB design is:
Afteranother close look at the layout, we find only a few frustratingissues. Namely, the board has no connectors for the fan on the caserare panel. I wonder what is behind this “popular” issue. For example,the recently tested Asus P6T mainboardalso didn’t have a connector for this type of fan. The next drawback isthe absence of LEDs. It is really nice that the board doesn’t blinklike a Christmas tree with a bunch of bright multi-color LEDs thatcannot be turned off; however, I think they could have left at leastone indicating if the board received power. Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P isnot the only board like that. We have already seen the same on ASRock X58 SuperComputer mainboard. But why would anyone repeat someone else’s drawbacks?
Technical SpecificationsAt this time Iwould like to take the opportunity and express my sincere discontentwith the content quality on the official AMD web-sites. GigabyteMA790XT-UD4P mainboard is based on AMD 790X chipset. Of course, thefirst natural intention is to go to the developer site to learn moreabout the peculiarities of this core logic set and differences from theother chipsets. I am afraid you may be unable to do so. You can easilyfind the page devoted to 7th series chipsets. You may evenfind the link to the specifications page. However, you won’t find anydetailed technical description of features there: at best there will besome general info that should rather be part of a marketing booklet andnot a serious web-site. For example, they used exact same wording forthe description of AMD 790FX and AMD 790X chipsets: does it mean thechipsets are exactly the same? No, they differ by the number of PCIExpress lanes; however, you will not find this information in the“marketing” technical specs.
This sad situation takes place notonly for AMD chipsets, but also graphics cards. Only processors seem tohave adequate technical info about them available. Note that they alsooffer you to rate their page in terms of design, content and usability(the corresponding link is at the bottom of every page of the AMDweb-site). You may also leave your comments and answer a few questionsthere. Please, do not skip the opportunity to do so. If you didn’t findthe information you were looking for, let them know. Hopefully, AMDwebmasters will take your comments into account and will improve thequality of info on their site. And at this time, let’s take a closerlook at the Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P specifications that can be easilylocated on Gigabyte’s official web-site:
BIOS SetupNow that we have checked out almost impeccablePCB design of the Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard and studied theimpressive list of supported features, any computer enthusiast will bemore than pleased. The BIOS Setup check promised to be quite pleasantas well, because we all know how thoughtful Gigabyte is when it comesto making their mainboard BIOS more illustrative, convenient to use andrich in features and functions. Unfortunately, we faced a few upsettingissues that may somewhat spoil the fun from working with GigabyteMA790XT-UD4P.
Gigabyte keeps hiding some BIOS Setup settingsbehind “Ctrl-F1” key combination. Don’t forget to press them onlaunching the BIOS Setup if you want to get full access to theavailable parameters.
Thefirst section we see is “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)” holdingalmost all settings that may be of interest to computer enthusiasts andoverclockers. At first glance, the page looks quite common forGigabyte: easy to work with and informative.
Itreports the current CPU frequency that will change when you change theclock frequency multiplier or clock generator frequency. You can alsoeasily check the integrated North Bridge frequency, which is set withmultipliers of its own.
Asfor the HyperTransport bus frequency, which also increases togetherwith the clock speed, it is set as is, without any multipliers:
Itdoesn’t matter what format is used to set the HyperTransport busfrequency. The problem is that the reported value remains fixed anddoesn’t change as the clock speed increases. You will have to calculatethe actual HyperTransport bus frequency manually, to make sure that itremains close to the nominal value during overclocking. Quite aninconvenience.
Let’s move on. Numerous parameters dealing withthe memory subsystem configuration are all on a separate page called“DRAM Configuration”:
Ithink it doesn’t make sense to duplicate settings for clock and memoryfrequency, but it is not a big deal anyway. However, it is great to seenot only the timings that the mainboard sets automatically, but alsothose written in the modules SPD. But what will happen if we decide tochange some memory timings manually?
Onceyou switch “DDR3 Timing Items” parameter to “Manual”, all “Auto”settings will disappear right away. Now you will see the actual valuesfor all of them, and as you can notice they differ dramatically fromthose used in Auto mode as well as from those written in the modulesSPD. As a result, even if you only wanted to adjust one timing value,you will be forced to set absolutely all memory timings manually. A pretty big setback.
Let’s get back to the main “Mainboard Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)”page and try adjusting the voltages manually. Just like with thetimings, all “Auto” settings are gone, but this time they get replacedwith “Normal”. And what are these “Normal” settings?
However,when we got down to business, there was a pleasant surprise waiting forus. When we tried to change the voltages, there appeared informationalparameters reporting the current values for the settings in question.If the numbers were too high, they were highlighted with a warningcolor.
Thetotal voltage sent to the CPU can also be calculated from the nominalvoltage that we know. Unfortunately, we know nothing about setting ofthe “CPU NB VID Control” parameter. And there is no option for raisingthe HyperTransport bus voltage, either. It’s a pity.
Just incase, let me check out the “PC Health Status” page. However, thefunctionality of this section has never been among Gigabyte mainboards’strengths. The main distinguishing feature of this section is probablythe ability to control the rotation speed of three-pin processor fan,which seems to be gone by almost all contemporary mainboards except theones from Gigabyte.
However,Gigabyte has a great utility for Windows called EasyTune6, which wehave already praised quite a few times in our previous reviews. Thisprogram reports the info about the processor and system board, may readinformation from the memory modules SPD, may help overclock theprocessor, memory or even graphics card. You can use CIA2 dynamicoverclocking (CPU Intelligent Accelerator), set up fan rotation speedcontrol for the CPU cooler, check the monitoring readings. However, allthese functions may be also implemented through the mainboard BIOS orwith other utilities. The unique feature of EasyTune6 is its ability toreport all voltage settings that the mainboard can control in the“Tuner” section on the “Advanced” page.
Everything we have justsaid I absolutely true, but only if you use EasyTune6 on any mainboardother than Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P. It turned out that in this case theutility reports the same two voltages (CPU and memory) that we can seein the BIOS Setup or with any other utilities, such as CPUID HardwareMonitor, for instance. Unfortunately, we had to uninstall the EasyTune6program, which was of no particular value anymore. What adisappointment!
Gigabyte mainboards are well-known for veryconvenient settings saving algorithm in the BIOS. Just press F11 in themain menu in order to save one of eight possible BIOS settingsprofiles. Each profile can have its own name reminding you of thecontents. Profiles can be saved not only in the memory but also onexternal media. You should absolutely take advantage of the latterfeature, because you will lose all saved profiles after reflashing theBIOS or switching to a reserve chip.
Bypressing F12 you get access to a similar menu where you can select oneof the presaved profiles. By the way, the board saves the currentsettings configuration automatically after each successful POST pass.This allows you to return to the last known working configuration, evenif you haven't saved it yourself.
Everything seems to be great,however, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard prepared another unexpectedsurprise for us: the loaded profile usually applied only on second try.No wonder that the board wouldn’t start on the first attempt, if wewere trying to make it work with the CPU overclocked way too high. Butthe board required a second reboot even when we loaded a profile withnominal settings. Not too convenient.
As for the built-in QFlashutility for BIOS updating that can be launched by pressing F8 from themain menu or “End” during mainboard booting, we have already mentionedall its advantages multiple times in our reviews. It is great that wecan forget about boot-up floppies or flash-drives: the built-in utilitywill save the current BIOS version and update the BIOS with a new onefrom any available medium.
However,the functionality of the Gigabyte QFlash utility is pretty limited andhasn’t been refreshed for quite some time. Unlike a similar programintegrated into the BIOS of Asus boards, we don’t see any informationabout the current BIOS version as well as about the version we aregoing to reflash. We don’t know which microchip we are using to savethe new BIOS version in, therefore if the board decides that theprimary chip is damaged, we may end up with the old BIOS version andlose all the settings we have worked on all this time. Besides,Gigabyte mainboards as always do not report anything about resettingall parameters or switching to the reserve BIOS chip, so you will notlearn about it right away: the board doesn’t report the currentprocessor frequency on system boot-up.
Andyou will be wrong to believe that DDR3 SDRAM from the screenshot aboveis working at 1066MHz, according to Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard. Infact, the current memory multiplier in the nominal CPU operational modewould have produced 1066MHz memory frequency. But in reality, the CPUis overclocked and the actual memory frequency is much higher.
For some reason Clear CMOS switch resets the date and time in the mainboard BIOS.
Weseem to have found quite a few issues, don’t you think so? Luckily,most of them are not critical and will not cause any problems forGigabyte MA790XT-UD4P in nominal as well as overclocked modes. They maysimply cause you some inconveniences, and that’s about it. We ran alltests with the BIOS version F2b, however, when we updated it to F3nothing changed.
Testbed and MethodsAll practical tests and experiments were performed on the following test platform:
- Mainboard: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P (Socket AM3, AMD 790X/SB750, rev. 1.0; BIOS F2b, F3);
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 (Socket AM3, 2.6GHz, 200MHz base frequency, 4MB L3 cache, Deneb, rev. C2, 1.3V Vcore);
- Memory: 2 x 2048MB DDR3 Wintec AMPX PC3-12800, 3AXH1600C9-4096K, (1600MHz, CL9, 1.5-1.9V voltage);
- Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB (RV770, 750/750/3600 MHz, 800 SP, 40 TMU, 16 ROP, 256-bit 512MB GDDR5);
- HDD: Samsung SP2504C (250GB, SATA II, 7200RPM, 8MB, rev. A);
- CPU Cooler: Cooler Master GeminII (120-mm Protechnic Electric MGA12012HB-O25 fan, 1500-2500RPM);
- Thermal interface: Noctua;
- PSU: Sunbeamtech NUUO Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W);
- Case: Antec Skeleton.
We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 operating system and ATI Catalyst 9.2 graphics card driver.
Performance in Nominal ModeThesystem worked in nominal mode perfectly fine. We can compare theperformance of our platform with a similar one, featuring the recently testedAsus M4A78T-E. The mainboards are based on different chipsets, whichare, nevertheless, very similar in functionality: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4Pis based on AMD 790X, while Asus M4A78T-E is based on AMD 790GX. Otherthan that both testbeds were configured absolutely identically. AllBIOS settings were at defaults and hence were set by the boardsthemselves. The only exception was the AMD Cool’n’Quiet power-savingtechnology that for some reason was disabled on the Asus board, so wehad to turn it on manually.
Aswe have expected, both systems show very similar results: one board isa little faster in some tests, another board – in other tests. Smalldifferences are absolutely natural. The only more or less noticeabledifference is in copy speed measured by Everest program, where Gigabytemainboard falls far behind. Both mainboards set DDR3 memory at 1333MHzfrequency with 7-7-7-20-1T timings by default. Asus board is probablysetting more aggressive secondary timings, which delivers such animpressive advantage. However, this advantage doesn’t really show inthe benchmarks we use for our test session, so you shouldn’t be tooconcerned about the significance of Gigabyte’s loss. It is just anotherproof of a well-known fact that the results of synthetic benchmarks donot always represent the actual state of things.
Performance during OverclockingWe overclocked our AMDPhenom II X4 810 processor on Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard withoutany problems. There were minor complications caused by theimperfections of the board itself. The CPU passed preliminary LinXtests at 250MHz frequency without raising the Vcore past 1.3V. It isway better than the 230MHz result achieved on Asus M4A78T-E. Andluckily we had no reason to be concerned about the health of ourprocessor, which we thought might have lost some of its overclockingpotential because of extremely high voltage it received from Asus boardduring our previous test session. Tests proved that our AMD Phenom IIX4 810 processor could overclock to 3.7GHz.
The CPU clock frequency multiplier and core voltage will lower when there is no workload due to AMD Cool’n’Quiet technology.
Overclocking was performed on Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P with the following BIOS settings:
Aswe have mentioned before, overclocking on Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P may notbe as smooth as you expect it to be. Note that according to the BIOS,HyperTransport bus frequency is set at 1.4GHz, while in reality it is1995MHz (taking into account clock frequency increased to 285MHz andHyperTRansport bus multiplier – to x7).
Itis not very interesting to compare the systems performance when the CPUis overclocked to 3.7GHz on Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P and only to 3.25GHzon Asus M4A78T-E. The results of this comparison are evident. But it isnot our fault that we couldn’t get Asus board to work stably at 285MHzclock generator frequency because of a number of issues we discovered,so we had to go down to 250MHz.
It was pretty predictable thatGigabyte MA790XT-UD4P would outperform the competitor. The notoriouscopy speed Everest test was the only exception: Asus mainboard was avery confident leader here. Although, this victory didn't really payoff. To be fair, we have to say that as soon as (if) all the issues wediscovered with Asus M4A78T-E are eliminated and resolved and itreaches stability at 3.7GHz CPU frequency, it will perform just as fastas Gigabyte solution we discussed today.
Power ConsumptionPower consumption measurements have become a traditional part of our mainboard reviews. We used Extech Power Analyzer 380803device. This device is connected before the system PSU, i.e. itmeasures the power consumption of the entire system without themonitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. Whenwe took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completelyidle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time.We used Fritz Chess Benchmark to load the CPU and FurMark utility toload the graphics subsystem. We recorded the maximum readings.
Nowonder that during CPU overclocking the system based on Gigabytemainboard consumes considerably more power than the system based onAsus. We had to push the voltages a little higher in order to ensurestability during higher CPU overclocking. However, even in nominal modethe system based on Asus consumes less power and only under higher loadthe difference decreases and then disappears completely.
ConclusionDespite numerous critical comments we made aboutGigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard, there is nothing serious that youshould be concerned about. I can even say that the board barely has anydrawbacks at all: it is very well built, has excellent PCB layout andtechnical characteristics, works impeccably in nominal mode andoverclocks CPUs very well. If we add here a number of Gigabyte’s brandname functions and technologies, the board will be almost ideal.Unfortunately, the word “almost” is still there. There are no seriousdrawbacks, but numerous little issues do spoil the remarkableimpression from this solution a little bit.
Let’s sum up all the little things we have pointed out throughout the review of Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P:
- No connector for the rear system case fan;
- No power LEDs;
- Some BIOS settings are hidden behind Ctrl-F1 key combination;
- HyperTransport bus frequency needs to be calculated manually;
- “CPU NB VID Control” voltage is not displayed anywhere;
- No parameter to increase the HyperTransport bus voltage;
- Insufficient functionality of the EasyTune6 utility in terms of voltage control;
- All memory timings will need to be adjusted manually, even if you only need to change one of them;
- The loaded BIOS settings profile will usually kick in only on second try;
- Limited QFlash functionality;
- The board doesn’t report resetting the parameters or switching to reserve BIOS chip;
- Insufficient and inexact information about the POST status;
- Clearing CMOS resets date and time.
Franklyspeaking, I feel awkward listing small things like that. I am sure youwill agree that these are not real drawbacks. These are small issuesand imperfections that can cause minor inconveniences, but will notdevelop into anything serious. Of course, but why are there so many ofthem? I could probably compare this mainboard to a chair: it is big,beautiful, reliable, and pretty comfortable at first glance, but it isnot sanded and lacquered, so the splinters…
Numerous “splinters”like that, which we have encountered during our work with GigabyteMA790XT-UD4P mainboard do not let us award it with a winning title. Wewould rank it as B+ (with A high), or A- at best. And if we disregardedall small issues we found, the board would be a real beauty. |
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发表于 2-5-2009 20:35:33
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