|
|
提示: 作者被禁止或删除, 无法发言
|
马上注册，结交更多好友，享用更多功能，让你轻松玩转社区。
您需要 登录 才可以下载或查看，没有帐号？FreeOZ用户注册
x
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles ... /asus-m4a78t-e.html
Foreword on CPUs and PlatformsFor many years I only dealtwith Intel processors on testbeds, while my home systems were all builtexclusively on AMD CPUs. Everything started long time ago with an AMDAthlon 750 Slot A CPU. There was a processor die in the middle of a PCBwith two external cache-memory chips on both sides of it. This wholething was placed into a humongous cartridge the size of a graphicscard, only much thicker because of the cooling system. Then I stayedfor quite some time with a renowned Socket A platform, a little bitwith Socket 754 and then for a while again with Socket 939. What didn’tI like about Intel processors? There are, in fact, several differentreasons. I didn’t like the constantly changing chipsets and sockets,when you had to replace the mainboard when you wanted to upgrade to aCPU with higher clock speed. For example, there were three types ofSocket 370. I didn’t like Rambus memory, Pentium 4 processormicroarchitecture and high heat dissipation of the Prescott cores. Ididn’t like very confusing model lineup evolution, when the firstPentium 4 Willamette CPUs were slower than Pentium III, and theprocessors on the new Prescott core fell behind those on Northwood.Moreover, I wasn’t happy about the high prices on Intel processors thatis why I always went for AMD CPUs that seemed to work perfectly for mefrom all aspects.
Of course, it would be incorrect to claim thatI paid no attention whatsoever to Intel CPUs. However, I could totallysatisfy my personal curiosity in the lab, where I could see theiradvantages as well as drawbacks in action. And I didn’t have anyintention of switching over to Intel platform until things turnedaround in summer of 2006 when Intel announced their new processormicroarchitecture implemented in Conroe. Spring of 2007 was the lasttime I tested a few Socket AM2 mainboards and purchased my very firstIntel Core 2 Duo processor. After that I forgot about AMD platform fortwo long years. I don’t see the point investing into a platform that isguaranteed to be slower than the competitor even after overclocking.However, it would be unfair to say that nothing changed. AMD processorswere now made with 65nm process, but ironically they followed Intel’sfootsteps when the new Brisbane CPUs turned out slower than the oldWindsor ones. The next milestone was the long-anticipated and stillvery disappointing AMD Phenom launch: Intel CPUs remained unattainablyahead. Time went on, priced continued to drop and finally we welcomedthe new AMD Phenom II.
I would like to remind you that we havethe whole bunch or materials on our site related to the new AMDsolutions launched this year:
Thereview titles suggest that situation has turned around for AMD,although there were no revolutionary changes introduced in the new AMDprocessors. Intel CPUs still hold the performance leadership, however,the users have to put up with a lot of negative consequences resultingfrom this impressive speed, such as high power consumption, heatdissipation and extremely high price. Top processor and graphics cardmodels have become mostly expensive toys for editors and dedicatedenthusiasts. The developers use their flagship solutions to demonstratetheir technological and intellectual superiority, while the regularusers who follow the reviews of all flagship solutions with greatinterest in the end purchase absolutely different more mainstreamcomponents. This is where things have changed recently: nothingdrastically new, but all the little changes combined together produceda serious breakthrough for AMD – their CPUs got in the spotlight ofpublic interest again. The transition to new manufacturing process,microarchitectural changes, improved overclocking potential andreasonable price made AMD Phenom II processors serious competitors tojunior models, i.e. more mainstream dual- as well as quad-core IntelCPUs.
We don’t know how long it is going to last, as Intel ispreparing an extremely promising LGA1156 platform already, prices maychange as well. So let’s take the advantage of the present moment andget back to talking about AMD platform. Today we are going to use AMDPhenom II X4 810 CPU to investigate the features and functionality ofthe new Socket AM3 mainboard from Asus – M4A78T-E based on AMD 790GXchipset.
Package and AccessoriesAccording to the color scheme of thecompany logo and unlike the packaging for Asus mainboards for Intelprocessors, Asus M4A78T-E ships in a green box:
Both, the front and the back of the box are covered with logos of supported technologies and functions:
The accessories bundled with Asus M4A78T-E are pretty scarce and include the following items:
- PATA cable;
- A pair of SATA cables with L-shaped connectors and another pair with straight connectors;
- Asus Q-Connector Kit for easy connection of the front panel buttons and indicators and USB ports;
- Asus Q-Shield for the rear panel (I/O Shield);
- User’s manual;
- DVD disk with software and drivers.
PCB Design and FunctionalityIn our recent Asus P6T mainboard reviewwe mentioned that every mainboard usually has a distinguishing feature.The funny thing is that Asus M4A78T-E seems to have no unique features:it is a good board, with pretty standard features and functionality. Itis, in fact, also good. Most importantly, there are no evidentdrawbacks.
AsusM4A78T-E mainboard uses 8-phase processor voltage regulator circuitrythat as always consist of very high-quality components. There is anindividual phase for powering the integrated memory controller andHyperTransport bus. The power connectors are located in pretty commonand therefore convenient spots. The only thing that surprised us wasthe 4-pin ATX12V connector instead of the 8-pin one although the boardis claimed to support up to 140W CPUs. There is no formal connectionbetween the processor power consumption and the number of pins in theATX12V power connector, however, there is normally an 8-pin connectorin this case.
SocketAM3 supports all CPUs designed in this form-factor. At this time AMDoffers the following CPUs for Socket AM3: AMD Phenom II X4 and AMDPhenom II X3. However, Asus claims that this board will also supportAMD Athlon X4, Athlon X3 and Athlon X2 CPUs, when (and if) they comeout. Just in case, let me remind you that Socket AM3 processors have auniversal memory controller that supports DDR3 as well as DDR2 SDRAM.Therefore, you can also install a CPU like that into a Socket AM2+mainboard, but not the other way around. Asus M4A78T-E mainboard isequipped with four DDR3 DIMM slots that support up to 16GB of RAMtotal. In the nominal CPU mode the memory may function at 1066, 1333 or1600MHz frequency.
The processor voltage regulator transistorsand the chipset North Bridge are covered with relatively largeheatsinks with sophisticatedly twisted fins. The chipset South Bridgeheatsink is pretty nominal.
AsusM4A78T-E mainboard uses AMD 790GX North Bridge with ATI Radeon HD 3300graphics core. As for the video memory, up to 512MB of RAM can be usedfor that purpose. Besides, there are also 128MB of memory on this boardthat have been assigned to the graphics subsystem via SidePort Memorytechnology.
Whenwe look at the bottom part of the board, we can notice a COM connectorthat has been placed unusually high, right next to the chipset NorthBridge heatsink. The graphics card slots have been moved a littlefarther from one another to allow easy use of graphics acceleratorswith massive cooling systems. If there is only one graphics cardinstalled, it will work at full PCI Express 2.0 x16 speed. With twographics cards used individually or together as an ATI CrossFireXconfiguration the slots will switch to x8 mode. The integrated graphicscore can also be used together with a discrete graphics card due to ATIHybrid CrossFireX support.
SB750 South Bridge delivers two PATAchannels and six Serial ATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. AsusM4A78T-E is equipped with five actual SATA ports with the sixth laidout as an eSATA on the back panel. There are also 6 USB 2.0 ports outof the 12 supported by the South Bridge. The remaining six USB 2.0ports are tied up to three pin-connectors along the lower edge of thePCB. There is an IEEE 1394 port next to them, which is implementedthrough VIA VT6315N controller. The second IEEE 1394 port providedthrough this controller is on the back panel. Interestingly enough, theeight-channel sound is implemented through another VIA controller – theVT1708S. I didn’t even known until today that VIA makes audio codecs,too. I have never seen them on mainboards until today.
Wedidn’t mention the PS/2 keyboard connector, six analogue audio-jacksand digital optical S/PDIF that are also on the connector panel of theboard. Moreover, the integrated graphics core provides support forD-Sub, DVI and HDMI, while the Gigabit Atheros L1E controller deliversnetwork RJ45 port.
The components layout scheme from the user’s manual will provide a better idea of Asus M4A78T-E design peculiarities:
Weare going to wind up this part of our review with the detailedtechnical specifications of the Asus M4A78T-E mainboard taken from themanufacturer official web-site:
Memory and Power Supply Compatibility IssuesUnfortunately,our first encounter with the Asus M4A78T-E mainboard was overshadowedby a number of different problems that have seriously affected ourfirst favorable impression from it. It was later that we found out theboard was not to blame for the discovered issues. However, it was notfree from a number of its own drawbacks, which unfortunately surfacedlater, too.
The main problem was the board refused to work stablyeven with default settings, without any CPU overclocking. The OS wouldboot, but any tests we tried running would inevitably lead to freezingand BSOD. For the preliminary tests I used the old operating systemthat was left from the previous LGA1366 platform tests. So, I decidedto remove it and install fresh, and again, without any luck. WindowsVista installation completed successfully, but everything would freezeupon first system boot-up when the performance check is made.
Finally,it turned out that there was a compatibility issue between the boardand 1024MB DDR3 OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Series modules. I had twoOCZ3P18002GK kits at my disposal, so the number of DIMMs was not theissue. I tried four, two and even one and checked out all the DIMMslots. The system remained unstable or couldn’t boot Windows Vista atall; couldn’t save the BIOS settings saying that it detected a new CPUon every system restart.
At that point it was unclear who the oneto blame was: Asus or OCZ? Therefore, I continued the experiments onAsus M4A78T-E with different memory modules. However, when I got to thepreliminary stability tests, we put together another Socket AM3 testbedbased on Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P mainboard. This solution is based onAMD 790X chipset and its review will come out shortly. At this point Iwould only like to say that the Gigabyte board also refused to workwith DDR3 OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Series memory modules. So, does itmean that it’s all OCZ’s fault? Any maybe we should blame AMD, sincetheir memory controller is integrated into AMD Phenom II X4 810processor?
They say that it happens very often that mainboardsare incompatible with memory some modules, video cards or otherexpansion cards and it doesn’t really depend on the platform type. Itcan happen to an Intel platform as well as to an AMD one. I personallyhave tested dozens of mainboards, but cannot recall any compatibilityissues like that in my experience. For the first time in two years Igot to testing a mainboard for AMD processors and immediately got acompatibility problem. Two different mainboards, from two differentmakers, based on different (though related) chipsets, one has an AMIbased BIOS, while the other – a Phoenix-Award based one, and both ofthem do not work with the same memory modules. I still have my doubtsabout the guilty, but for some reason I just wanted to get back totesting Intel platforms again…
I replaced the memory modules, butit didn’t solve the problem. When I started my overclocking experimentsand found what seemed to be an optimal and operational combination offrequencies and voltages, another mysterious phenomenon surfaced. Thesystem successfully passed short stability tests with utilitiescreating high workload, but would fail any long-term tests lasting foran hour or more. Everything would inevitably lead to the notorious bluescreen of death. And again it took me a while to determine that itwasn’t the mainboard’s fault, but the power supply’s. By purecoincidence or irony the PSU was an OCZ one, too.
I still do notsay that OCZ solutions have a quality issue. However, I can and willcomplain that the fan inside my OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700 PSU was soloud that I couldn’t use it in my home system and had to replace with aquieter and hence less powerful one. This modified power supply unitproved capable of working just fine in my moderately overclocked homesystem for a long time. Moreover, it successfully participated in ourrecent tests of an overclocked and hence very resource-hungry LGA1366platform. However, the quiet but less powerful fan could no longer copewith the overheating PSU during long-term stability tests. That was thereason for the blue screens of death to pop up.
Performance in Nominal ModeFinally, when all theproblem-causing parts have been successfully identified and replaced Itested Asus M4A78T-E mainboard in the following platform:
- Mainboard: Asus M4A78T-E (Socket AM3, AMD 790GX/SB750, BIOS 0801 from 03.06.09);
- 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.
Weused Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 operating system and ATICatalyst 9.2 graphics card driver. It turned out that if you run a32-bit OS and use 4GB of RAM, you can increase the amount of memoryassigned to the integrated graphics core “for free”. 32-bit WindowsVista can only use 3.3GB of memory, so we could provide our Radeon HD3300 with the maximum possible amount of 512MB without losing anything.The OS will still have all the 3.3GB it can work with. Of course, itdoesn’t necessarily mean that the performance of the integratedgraphics core will increase dramatically because of that, but it won’tdo any harm, that’s for sure.
In fact it is pretty interesting tosee how UMA and SidePort technologies actually coexist? Asus M4A78T-Emainboard has 1q28MB of DDR3 memory assigned for graphics subsystemneeds through SidePort technology. It works at 1333MHz by default withunknown timings. The integrated graphics card can also use system RAMthat can work at a completely different frequency and with differenttimings. So how do they get synchronized? Will the “excessive” requeststhe graphics card sends to RAM affect the system performance, can itpotentially drop? We tested our system in its nominal mode in order toanswer all these questions. In the first test session it was theintegrated ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics core that employed the 128MB ofdefault SidePort memory along with 512MB from the system RAM. In thesecond round of tests there was a discrete Radeon HD 4870 512MBgraphics card with disabled integrated graphics core.
Pleasedisregard the specific numbers showing a tremendous performancedifference between a powerful discrete card and a weak integratedgraphics core. The tests took a long time but completed successfully,although 3DMark Vantage offered to change the test settings and rerunthe test, because the results looked really suspicious.
Themain conclusion is that the general system performance doesn’t getaffected by the use of the integrated graphics core in those benchmarkswhere the graphics card has no influence on the final result. As forATI Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 3300, we all know that we can’t reallycompare the functionality and potential of the two, even though we usemedium quality settings for both in all graphics tests.
Overclocking and PerformanceI would like to say right away that Asus mainboards’ specificsthat do not let us overclock Intel CPUs well and at the same timemaintain all processor power-saving technologies, are not the case withAMD processors. You can lower the processor Vcore, increase it or leaveat nominal and the CPU will work as instructed under load.
However,as soon as the load disappears AMD Cool’n’Quiet technology will kick inand the CPU will lower its frequency and core voltage.
Overall,I have been very please with AMD Phenom II X4 810 overclockingexperience on Asus M4A78T-E. Overclocking hasn’t been so simple, clear,quick and easy for a while. Just raise the clock generator frequencyand increase the processor Vcore if system loses stability monitoringthe temperature at the same time. And then increase the frequencyagain. The only other thing you should keep an eye on is that thefrequency of the North Bridge integrated into the CPU and theHyperTransport bus connecting the processor with the chipset NorthBridge were close to the nominal 2000MHz. Taking into account thepotential of Asus M4A78T-E mainboard, all these requirements are reallyeasy to meet. For example, if I am ever invited to my kids’ school foran overclocking lesson, I will take something close to my currenttestbed configuration rather than an LGA775 or LGA1366 platform, whichhave much more things to take into account.
Our AMD Phenom II X4810 processor at 230MHz frequency passed preliminary stability tests inLinX utility on Asus M4A78T-E mainboard without changing its Vcore fromthe nominal 1.3V. For your reference, the same processor managed topass the same tests on Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P mainboard at 250MHz.Quite a difference, isn’t it? However, I didn’t know about it at thattime. Besides, AMD processors do not require nominal Vcore settings tobe in place for processor power-saving Cool’n’Quiet technology to work.Therefore, we continued our experiments. The end result turned outpretty good: we managed to overclock our CPU to 285MHz base frequency,i.e. 3.7GHz clock speed. Besides LinX utility, we tested the systemstability with more than an hour run of Prime95 in Blend mode.
Toincrease the system performance we raised the frequency of the NorthBridge integrated into the CPU to 2565MHz. that in its turn requiredraising CPU/NB Voltage to 1.275V. The processor core voltage had to beincreased to 1.575V, but in idle mode it would drop together with thefrequency multiplier.
Bythe way, when we used the integrated graphics core we had to stop at275MHz frequency, because further increase led to evident systeminstability and serious image quality artifacts. It seems that maximumoverclocking of a system using integrated graphics will seriouslydepend on the current memory frequency and timings and on theintegrated graphics core settings in the mainboard BIOS.
When we finished this round of tests on Asus M4A78T-E mainboard, weput together a testbed around Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P in order tocheck if OCZ memory would work ok and see how far we could push ourtest processor here. As you know, the memory wouldn’t work, CPUoverclocked way higher at the default processor core voltage, but theresults of maximum CPU overclocking test remained exactly the same. Wehad to increase the CPU Vcore only to 1.525V, while the additional+0.15V had to be provided for the North Bridge controller integratedinto the CPU.
We are going to discuss Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P indetail in our next review, and now at the final testing stage we aregoing back to our today’s hero - Asus M4A78T-E mainboard. Wereinstalled the operating system and ran performance tests in thenominal mode as described in the previous part of the article. Afterthat we launch the same set of benchmarks on an overclocked system, butsuddenly the BSOD comes up during 3DMark Vantage run. It was verystrange, because we reproduced exactly the same testing conditions asbefore. Tried to change a few things, but again no luck. Desperatelylooking for answers in the preliminary test results obtained onGigabyte mainboard, and notice that it required higher voltage on theNorth Bridge integrated into the CPU to ensure stability. So, weincrease this setting a little, then another bit and finally pass thenotorious test. And things could have been great, however, the systemcould no longer pass the long-term stability check in Prime95.
Bythat time I was already a little exhausted by all the problems I facedsince the beginning of the Asus M4A78T-E test session. However, Ireduced the overclocking to a completely different reason. AsusM4A78T-E mainboard can send maximum 1.45V to the CPU by default. Inorder to be able to raise the Vcore to 1.65V, you have to reset the“CPU overvoltage” jumper on the board. We did this exact thing toensure that we could overclock our processor to its maximum. However,we started to get “Overvoltage error” message pretty frequently onsystem boot-up. It required pressing F1 to continue booting. I didn’tpay too much attention to it for a while, but then I went into theHardware Monitoring section. Although the system was working in itsnominal mode and I didn’t raise any voltages, the CPU was getting over1.64V! I immediately recalled that Everest often reported higher CPUVcore when we ran the tests on an overclocked processor. Namely, itread up to 1.62-1.64V, although we had only increased it to 1.575V inthe BIOS. Check out a couple of screenshots above. I assumed that itwas a monitoring error, but turns out that the CPU was in factreceiving that much voltage. Could it be slowly killing our CPU thusaffecting its overclocking potential? Well, we will find out during ourGigabyte board tests, and at this point we’d better give up “CPUovervoltage” function altogether.
I usually record my experimentsin a special overclocker log. That is why I immediately remembered thatat 1.45V processor core voltage the system passed LinX stability testat 270MHz clock generator frequency, but refused to restart. It wouldfreeze in the very beginning, during the graphics card initializationprocess. At that time I thought that it happened because of overlyoverclocked processor and used “CPU overvoltage” jumper to raise itsVcore a little further. This time let’s try and lower the clockgenerator frequency to 265MHz – no restart. The same happened at 260MHzand only when we got down to 257MHz we could reboot the systemsuccessfully. However, this is relatively low frequency. Gigabytemainboard could reach just a little lower frequency even with thenominal processor Vcore…
Well, there is a lot of stuff connectedwith the processor core voltage here, so I decided to try and lower ita little and see what happens. This was the right thing to do. Now theboard could reboot at 258MHz clock generator frequency. After a coupleof additional experiments I discovered that when the CPU Vcore islowered down to 1.4V, Asus M4A78T-E mainboard can even restartsuccessfully at 270MHz. That was almost a victory! I say “almost”because this voltage was not enough for the system to pass the tests atthis frequency.
Finally, when the processor Vcore was at 1.4V,Asus M4A78T-E mainboard could only ensure satisfactory operationalconditions for it at 250MHz. this is where we had to stop.
Actually,250MHz frequency is very convenient for CPU overclocking. In this casewe get nominal frequencies for the memory, North Bridge integrated intothe CPU and HyperTransport bus. In fact, we increased the North Bridgefrequency to 2500MHz and lowered the memory timings in order to pump upthe speed.
Now we need to find a worthy rival for our test processor. From our review called “Meet Socket AM3: AMD Phenom II X4 810 CPU Review”we know that this processor can successfully compete against Intel Core2 Quad Q8xxx series, however, I didn’t have a CPU like that at mydisposal at the time of tests, unfortunately. Instead I had the newIntel Core 2 Quad Q9400 with yet unknown overclocking potential. Wouldyou like to check it out now?
Luckily for us and unfortunatelyfor the undertaken comparison, the CPU overclocked brilliantly. So far,I have never exceeded 500MHz FSB in my overclocking experiments onquad-core Intel Core 2 Quad processors.
Sadly,even when if overclocked AMD Phenom II X4 810 to 3.7GHz, it wouldn’tstand a chance against the overclocking monster from Intel. So, our3.25GHz achievement is absolutely out of the question. Well, since wedon’t have a fair rival at this point, we will just stick to on singleCPU in the next round. It will give us another change to check out theadvantages from CPU overclocking.
Notbad at all. We overclocked our CPU by 25% and got the same performanceboost. Of course, lowering the memory timings and increasing theintegrated North Bridge frequency helped achieve these results.
Power ConsumptionWe measured the power consumption of ourtest systems running in the nominal mode with a discrete graphics cardas well as integrated graphics core and in an overclocked mode with adiscrete ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics accelerator. 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.
Ofcourse, CPU overclocking by raising the core voltage increases thesystem power consumption. However, in this case the transition from apower-efficient integrated to a powerful discrete graphics solution hasa much bigger influence on the end result.
ConclusionAt first, numerous issues that we facedthroughout the en tire test session wouldn’t let us adequatelyexperience the benefits of the Asus M4A78T-E mainboard. Luckily, itturned out that the mainboard has nothing to do with most of theseissues, and is overall a very good product. Asus M4A78T-E boasts veryconvenient design and sufficient functionality. It will be a good basisfor a power-efficient and very quiet system if used with an integratedgraphics card, or high-performance system if used with a powerfuldiscrete one. There are only two issues that prevent the board fromreaching the top of its ability:
- Incorrect operation of the “CPU overvoltage” function, which sends dangerously high voltage to the CPU;
- The so-called “FSB Hole” between 258MHz and 270MHz, when the board cannot work properly.
IfAsus engineers manage to eliminate these issues in their upcoming BIOSversions, we will have an excellent, almost universal mainboard. Ifnot, then Asus M4A78T-E will just remain a good board, working stablyin nominal mode, but capable of modest CPU overclocking. |
|
发表于 2-5-2009 21:18:19
收藏
赞
踩
楼主