![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , July 06, 2010
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard Review
ASUS' latest AM3 offering promises to be at least an interesting one. Not only does it feature USB 3 and SATA 6Gbps support, it also offers the lowest cost of entry into the world of quad core computing with support for a Core Unlocker. All with an 890GX chipset with integrated graphics as well.
BIOS
The M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 uses the American Megatrends Inc. BIOS or AMI BIOS for short. BIOS version 1301 was used for all screen shots and testing.
The BIOS for the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 is AMI classic. The BIOS menus themselves look like they would on any AMI BIOS based board made in the last 15+ years. At the top everything is listed by category and once selected you'll find a host of options and sub-menus with even more options that are matched up with whatever category you have selected.
The "Main" category has the standard time and date settings, language, and it displays your legacy mode SATA or IDE devices. There is a storage sub-menus which actually contains your settings for RAID, AHCI etc. In addition to that there is a "System Information" sub-menu which displays basic information about the machine configuration. It shows the BIOS version, build date, installed processor model, clock speed, and installed system memory.
The next section of note is the AI Tweaker menu. This contains all the good stuff for tuning your system to maximize performance. At the top of the screen it shows the target CPU frequency and target DRAM frequency. CPU level up can be enabled or disabled. In this case I was using a Phenom II X4 965BE and it was grayed out. Below the first dividing line there are several options. OC Tuner Utility, AI Overclock Tuner, CPU Ratio, DRAM frequency, CPU/NB frequency, and HT link speed. There are also two sub-menus here; "DRAM Timing Configuration" and "DRAM Driving Configuration." Under the next dividing line we have all of our voltage settings. You can select your voltage mode, Offset or manual mode can be selected. Then you have voltage settings for CPU Offset, CPU/NB Offset, CPU VDDA voltage, DRAM voltage, HT, NB, SB, SidePort Memory Voltage, etc. Then you can drop down just below the SidePort memory voltage option is yet another dividing line. Underneath that one you'll find CPU load-line calibration, CPU/NB load-line calibration and CPU spread spectrum settings. Below that is another dividing line. These settings are all about the integrated graphics solution. You may enable or disable this as you choose. You can set your UMA frame buffer size, SidePort clock speed, Enhanced iGPU speed step and GFX engine clock override. This last setting is for overclocking your GPU.
Going back to the "DRAM Timing Configuration" sub-menus we have all of our CAS latency and other timing settings. These range from CAS latency, to DRAM RAS# to CAS# delay, DRAM RAS# Pre time, to DRAM command rate. Underneath "DRAM Timing Configuration" we find the DRAM driving configuration sub-menus. Again there is a myriad of settings to choose from or configure. Among them are; CKE drive strength, CS/ODT drive strength, ADDR/CMD drive strength, MEMCLK drive strength, and Processor ODT.
Next is the "Advanced" menu. Here you will find a plethora of sub-menus to choose from. CPU configuration, Chipset, Onboard devices configuration, USB configuration and PCIPnP. The CPU configuration menu provides settings for the CPUs features. Microcode update, secure virtual machine mode, Cool 'n' Quiet, and C1E support. This menu also contains some board feature settings that have to do with the processor but aren't part of the processor itself. The ASUS Core Unlocker can be enabled or disable here. The CPU Core Activation option allows you to enable or disable all but Core 1 or CPU 0 if you so desire. The Advanced Chipset Settings menu contains two links to additional sub-menus. North bridge configuration and 890GX configuration. The north bridge menu gives you two more sub-menus. DRAM controller configuration and ECC configuration. The former allows you to setup channel interleaving, MemCLK tristate C3/ATLVID, memory hole remapping, DCT Unganged mode, and power down enable. The ECC configuration menu doesn't really allow us to do anything since ECC memory has not been installed in this system. However, if there were we'd have several settings to work with. DRAM ECC enable, DRAM, SCRUB redirect, 4-bit ECC mode, etc.
The 890GX configuration menu brings us to the Internal graphics configuration sub-menus as well as the primary video configuration. The latter allows for the prioritizing of the installed graphics adapters. The former allows us to adjust the integrated graphics controller's power management and some memory settings. We can also enable or disable the onboard graphics controller's built-in audio which is normally used for carrying audio over the HDMI output. Next we have the onboard devices configuration menu. This is typically self-explanatory. You can adjust settings for, or enable/disable the integrated hardware which has been added to the motherboard PCB. Serial ports, LAN ports, integrated audio and drive controllers can all be adjusted here. The USB configuration sub-menu is not typically worth noting but for some reason in this case ASUS chose to keep USB 3.0 and 2.0 controller settings separate. USB 3.0 is controlled directly from the main Onboard Devices Configuration menu while USB 2.0 gets its own sub-menu.
Above are some screen shots of various BIOS options which are general and are included in all boards of this type. Last of these is the hardware monitor which is the only one which is note worthy at all in the above screen captures. It is standard fair of course but the hardware monitor does allow you to check the health of the system as well as set temperature thresholds and fan speeds, or to view current voltage settings. The ASUS Q-Fan feature is also controlled from here.
Skipping past the "Boot" menu which only contains boot device settings and ordering, we come to the last point of interest. The "Tools" menu. Here we can setup ASUS EZ-Flash, Express Gate, Enter OS Timer, (which is related to the Express Gate feature) ASUS O.C. Profiler, AI Net 2, and POST state LED control. The ASUS EZ-Flash is used for flashing the system BIOS from the hard drive or removable media. The Express gate feature is ASUS' proprietary OS for allowing basic system functionality without installing Windows. As I've stated numerous times, this is of limited use and I won't go too much into it but I think it is sufficient to say that most enthusiasts won't be using it either. The Enter OS timer setting is just how long the system will wait on the Express Gate menu before proceeding to the installed operating system. It defaults to 10 seconds so I recommend cutting this down or disabling it outright. AI Net 2 is the built in network tester for your LAN port. This can test for damage in the wires as it performs loop back testing for you and displays the results. While it is potentially useful I've never actually had to use it despite owning quite a few ASUS boards over the years. Finally we have POST state LED control which as you might imagine controls those pretty LEDs on the boards PCB.