On this board, aside from the usual power, reset, and clear CMOS buttons, MSI include three buttons to ease the overclocking process. The left-most, after changing the clock speeds, helps the user figure out the CPU's overclocking limits. MSI's recent cooling system is the Flat Fins Copper-Pipe. Its appearance has a lot of class, and truly gives off an air of being a high-level product. The pipes' flow can bring the temperature down below 52 degrees C, which is in part due to the benefits of the AMD(ATI) chipset's low temperature, and low energy use. Here is the screen after powering on the machine BIOS main screen Cell Menu You can tweak the voltage quite a bit Memory-Z DRAM settings page; opening the selection menu lets you see several more performance settings. |
M-Flash, you can directly update the BIOS H/W Monitor Tested platform CPU: AMD AM3 45nm 2.8G MB: MSI 790FX-GD70 DRAM: CORSAIR Dominator 1GBX2 DDR3 2133C9D VGA: MSI N9600GT Diamond HD: SAMSUNG 250GB POWER: Corsair HX1000W Modular Power Supply Cooler: Thermaltake V1 AX/JETART Nano Diamond CPU info 45nm, triple-core, without L3 version (the tested CPU has specs which won't be produced anymore). The graphics card used is MSI N9600GT Diamond Its components are outstanding, Hi-c CAP,DrMOS and its specs use the special 9600GT. IO ports have DVI, HDMI, D-SUB via a DVI-D-Sub adapter, S/PDIF-in and an overclocking button. The DDR3 used the high-end, CORSAIR Dominator 1GBX2 DDR3 2133C9D Preliminary test CPU 200X14=>2800Mhz 1.300V DRAM DDR3 1333 CL6 6-6-18 1T VGA 650/1625/850Mhz Hyper PI 3X32M & CPUMARK CrystalMark 2004R3 CINEBENCH R10 DDR3 1333 CL6 6-6-18 1T Sandra Memory Bandwidth-12269MB/s EVEREST Memory Read-93533MB/s |
3DMARK2005 3DMARK2006 Crysis Benchmark Overclocked test (without limits) Test settings CPU 240X15=>3600Mhz 1.337V DRAM DDR3 1600 CL8 8-8-24 1T VGA 650/1625/850Mhz Hyper PI 3X32M & CPUMARK CrystalMark 2004R3 CINEBENCH R10 DDR3 1600 CL8 8-8-24 1T Sandra Memory Bandwidth-14476MB/s EVEREST Memory Read-10544MB/s 3DMARK2005 3DMARK2006 Crysis Benchmark The tested AM3 chipset is the 790FX northbridge with the SB750 southbridge, which is currently AMD's pinnacle product. Price-wise, because it has come out after AM2+ has been on the market for a while, it isn't too much of a jump from previous boards. MSI put a lot of thought and attention to detail into its AM3 platform 790FX-GD70. Aside from adding new functions and design, the cooling system is a thing of beauty and adds to the overall sense of quality in this board. This was my first time using the 45nm AM3 platform, and I can already see a big drop in temperature and energy-use. The frequency peaks have also been raised quite a bit from the 65nm chips - online results I have seen indicate the AM2+ PhenomII can be overclocked to 4GHz or higher. Regarding the performance, although they results weren't the surprise I had imagined, the 45nm design showed a not too small improvement in lowering the temperature and conserving energy. Add to that AMD's CPUs lower price-range, then I can see this platform attracting a lot of customer attention if the 45nm triple-core or other PhenomII CPUs can maintain a price similar to the current 65nm versions. Personally, given the high price-performance ratio, I feel that this AMD platform has a lot of potential in the mid-/low-price segments of 2009. This review marks a new beginning for AMD, and it is my hope that even better AM3 overclocking performance or special functions will appear in the many reports to follow :). |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 09:31. |
Powered by vBulletin® - Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content Relevant URLs by vBSEO