![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , August 04, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD Motherboard
The MSI 790FX-GD70 looks to be another winning product for MSI. It's a feature rich solution designed for AMD's socket AM3 processors using DDR3 memory with the overclocking enthusiast in mind.
BIOS
MSI chose the American Megatrends Inc. BIOS for the 790FX-GD70. Version 1.3 was used for all testing and screen captures. At the time of this writing version 1.3 is the latest BIOS available from MSI's website. The BIOS was dated 4/27/2009.
The American Megatrends BIOS is laid out in a DOS menu style and is broken down by categories. The standard CMOS Features menu has the usual time and date settings, and leads to a system information menu. The system information screen shows the name and type of CPU, along with the CPU frequency, BIOS version, and memory information.
The Advanced BIOS Features contains the BIOS flash protection, full screen logo display, and CPU, chipset, and boot sequence settings. The CPU Feature sub menu contains SVM and C1E support settings. Chipset Feature contains an HPET setting.
Next is Integrated Peripherals which contains settings used for configuring onboard hardware such as RAID controllers, LAN ports, audio etc. Power management contains all the normal ACPI functions and settings for the power button. The hardware monitor displays general PC health including voltages. Fan speeds and fan smart control settings are also found here. MSI's Green Power feature is what allows for the active phase switching feature to de-activate unnecessary power phases.
The Cell Menu is where all the overclocking, tuning and tweaking gets done. This contains CPU specifications, AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet feature, CPU FSB frequency, CPU ratio, CPU-NB ratio, Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), Auto Overclock Technology, OC dial, etc. Next are two sub menus. These are Memory-Z and Advance DRAM Configuration. The Memory-Z feature allows you to read SPD and XMP information from memory modules. This allows you to look at the complete timing information and timing tables for your modules. HT link control, link speed, PCI-Express frequencies, etc can be seen here in screen shots 10-14.
The Cell Menu also contains voltage settings. As you can see in the images, the 790FX-GD70 has a very robust voltage configuration menu. One of the most robust I've ever seen. Also seen above is the Memory-Z and SPD information.
Advanced DRAM configuration contains a ton of configurable options. Once DRAM Timing mode is set to DCT0, DCT-1 or "BOTH" it unlocks a whole slew of settings which can be seen here. As with the voltage settings for this board you'd be hard pressed to find a board with more DRAM configuration options.
Last is the M-Flash utility which is a built in utility for updating the system BIOS. It is fairly simple to operate and is really self-explanatory.