HARDOCP - Subsystem Testing - ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard Review

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.

continued...

Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an AMD Phenom II X4 965BE and 2GBx2 Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K6/12GX memory modules running at DDR3 1066MHz (8-8-8-26-1T @1.65v) were used. The CPU was cooled with a home brew water cooling setup consisting of a Swiftech MCR320 triple radiator, 3x120mm fans, Swiftech MCP655-B pump, and a Swiftech Apogee GT water block with socket AM2/AM3 mounting hardware.

Onboard Video

The ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 has an onboard GPU/graphics controller. It features an integrated AMD Radeon 4290 GPU that uses system RAM for itself. Any graphics controller using system RAM is NOT what you are looking for as a gaming solution. As a result I won't waste anyone's time evaluating its gaming performance. It isn't going to perform well at all in that regard. It does however support Hybrid Crossfire/CrossfireX. You can set the memory frame buffer size from 32MB to 512MB and set the Sideport memory speed or even overclock the GPU if you choose. One thing I really did like about this feature is that it passes audio over HDMI flawlessly as soon as the Radeon Audio driver is loaded. I tested this on my 32" Samsung LCD TV and was actually impressed with the basic sound quality in Windows. Of course this solution isn't capable of recording audio so there is nothing to say except that it doesn't do that. Though I didn't test it out in this capacity, I do believe this would make for a killer HTPC. Well that is aside from the fact that many HTPC chassis are designed for smaller form factor boards rather than full sized ATX boards like this one. Though such chassis do exist if you choose to go that route.

Sound Hardware

The M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 uses the Realtek ALC892 8-channel high definition audio codec. It boasts a fairly impressive feature list according to ASUS' published specifications for the board. They boast BD audio layer content protection, support for 192khz/24bit playback, Blu-Ray disc lossless sound, DTS Surround, jack detection, and front panel jack-re-tasking. It also supports optical S/PDIF and the ASUS noise filter.

Audio – Subjective Listening

For subjective listening you want to listen to something that covers a range of sound types. For this portion of the review I went with Disturbed, Indestructible.

CD audio playback was flawless though I expected nothing less. This is actually something that every manufacturer has pretty much nailed.

Audio – Microphone Port Testing

The onboard audio MIC-IN port was tested using a Logitech Internet Chat Headset. Spoken words were recorded from the Windows Sound Recorder found under the Accessories\Entertainment folder in the start menu within Windows XP. The recording was made with the Microphone Boost option disabled, then enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the advanced menu under the microphone section with in the Volume Control Menu.

The recording sample was audible with the microphone boost option enabled, but it had some fairly bad distortion. With the microphone boost option enabled the sample was louder and slightly clearer but still distorted.

Drive Performance

To test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 connections, we used an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected first to the USB port. SATA drive tests were performed using Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives on all SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 16k block size configurations on all applicable controllers. Testing was also conducted using the same model SATA drives in a stand-alone SATA configuration on all applicable controllers. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.

As you might imagine the RAID 0 test dominated here. The JMicron JMB361 wasn't bad but it wasn't quite on par with the SB850. CPU usage was much higher, and it did perform more I/O's per second, but with a worse response time. CPU usage was higher in RAID 0 mode than in standalone mode in regard to the SB850 but again the raw performance of the RAID0 solution bested it in both response and total I/O's per second.

Network Utilization Tests

Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used with Windows Task Manager to determine the performance levels of the onboard network interface. DU Meter was used to measure bandwidth and transfer speeds, while Windows Task Manager monitored CPU utilization on the test system. For the testing, a 750MB Archive file consisting of several compressed WMA/MP3 files was used for the large file transfer, and 750MB worth of MP3/WMA files were used ranging in sizes from 3 to 30MB was used for the small files transfer test. The test was performed using a plenum rated category 5e crossover cable to bypass any traffic, routing or other transfer issues and possible packet loss or corruption that can be caused by a router/switch or hub. The cables were connected between two test machines, one using the onboard NIC(s) of the board being reviewed and the other is an Intel EXPI9400PT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed into a test machine using an Intel D5400XS motherboard.

The M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 has a single Realtek 8111E integrated network controller. It is capable of 10/100/1000Mbps speeds.

LAN1

The small files download test yielded decent results. The maximum transfer speed was 69.16MB a second with an average transfer rate of 52.31MB a second. CPU usage came in at 10%. The small files upload test was not as encouraging. 29.01MB a second for the maximum transfer rate and 13.37MB for the average. I ran the test three times with fresh reboots on both test systems. This was the BEST result I achieved. CPU usage during this pathetic showing for the integrated NIC was a whopping 6%.

Like the small files test, the large files download test had good results. 69.04MB a second for the peak and 56.25MB for the average. That result was almost identical to that of the earlier test. CPU usage was better this time around at 6% compared to the 10% of the small files test. Again the upload results were embarrassingly sad. 34.58MB a second for the maximum and a fast and furious 11.76MB a second average transfer. I've never been able to run one of these tests and leave my desk to perform other tasks, come back and still wait on the test to complete. CPU usage was only 3% but clearly the test system wasn't working hard to move that data. At this point I'm hoping that this was a driver issue in Windows XP and Windows Vista or 7 results would be better. It could also be that the Realtek 8111E was optimized more for downloads rather than uploads. Keep in mind that for the most part that's what you'll be doing most of the time. Or at least this is true of most people.

All things considered this is one of the worst NICs I've ever experienced in a board. With that said it is probably adequate most of the time but speeds this low on a gigabit connection for upload performance plain sucks.

Test Systems

The following system configurations were used for the Sandra memory benchmark graph, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections: