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MSI 890FXA-GD70 Motherboard Review

MSI's newest offering supporting AMD's line of processors comes in the form of the 890FXA-GD70. This board could potentially be a P55 killer, with its balance of features and performance prowess. How does it do in the HardOCP gauntlet and better yet, how well does it overclock?

Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an AMD Phenom II x6 1055T CPU with the CPU FSB running at 200 and 2 x 2GB Patriot VIPER PVV34G2000LLK memory modules running at 1600MHz were used in testing.

Audio - Subjective Listening

One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose to listen to the Flyleaf album Momento Mori.

Playback of the selected audio tracks was flawless, with no discernable audio distortion heard over the entire listening session.

Audio - Microphone Port Testing

The MIC-IN input was tested using our standard Labtec Desk Mic 524 testing microphone. Spoken words were recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.

Both with and without Microphone Boost enabled, the microphone audio pickup was outstanding and distortion free. However, overall audibility was much better with it enabled.

Drive Performance

To adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected to both ports. SATA drive tests were performed using Western Digital 1TB SATA III hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration on the AMD SB850 controller only and standalone mode on the AMD SB850 and JMicron controllers. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.

As expected, the AMD SB850 based RAID array took the performance lead, with both standalone drives trailing it by less than 10%. In standalone mode, the 6G based SB850 controlled drive had a negligible performance advantage over the JMicron SATA 2 based controller. Both external devices performed as expected and within reach of one another. For the duration of all tests, the CPU utilization remained well below the 1% mark.

Network Utilization Tests

Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Realtek GigE NICs. Note that only one set of results is shown, since it was found in testing that both controllers performed similarly. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 750MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and a 750MB worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an integrated Gigabit NIC on the host system and a crossover cable to connect the host system to the test system. A crossover cable was used to rule out any possible bandwidth losses due to hub or switch passage.

Realtek GigE controller

The large file transfer results were impressive, with the upload speed besting that of download by almost 15 MB/s, coming in at a blazing 53 MB/s average. For both tests, the CPU utilization remained below the 10% mark.

The small file transfer tests were equally impressive, with the upload speed beating out download by 10 MB/s with just under a 47 MB/s average speed. Again, the CPU utilization remained under 10% during both transfer sessions.

Synthetic Performance Testing

Test Systems

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

Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Type & Clock Speed - Memory Speed

Sisoft Sandra 2009

Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode for all systems with the exception of the Intel X58 based board which ran in Triple Channel mode.

The 890FXA-GD70 performs as expected, with its performance matching that of the other Dual Channel memory based systems

The 890FXA-GD70 shows strongly here, with its performance matching the other AMD system and managing to come close to the performance of the high end Intel X58 based board.

Hiper Pi

While the 890FXA-GD70 cannot compete well with the Intel based boards, it does manage to outperform the other AMD based solution easily.

wPrime

The 890FXA-GD70 makes a strong showing, matching performance with both the AMD based system and the Intel X58 based system.