Conclusion
Asus' motherboard did the greatest number of things well, while MSI’s accurate voltage setting allowed it to take the overclocking lead under a very narrow set of circumstances. But how did these two perform?
The big surprise from today’s performance charts is that Gigabyte wins, in spite of Asus’ 0.35% uncorrectable overclock. And we’ve yet to consider price and slot layout differences that might make different products suitable for different buyers.
During our overclock tests, we ran into problems because most boards jumped from 1.440 V to 1.456 V, violating our 1.45 V limit, since the latter setting rounds to 1.46 V. After-hours testing showed that Biostar would have won if 1.46V were the limit. The TA890FXE is also the cheapest board in today’s roundup at $140, making it the perfect choice for budget overclockers who don’t care about its lack of USB 3.0 capability.
For a few dollars more than the low-cost Biostar, ASRock’s $155 890FX Deluxe3 offers a more CrossFire-friendly slot layout and is the only board in today’s roundup to offer four USB 3.0 ports. Windows XP users who need to load AHCI drivers will also note that this is the least-expensive board to include a legacy floppy interface. ASRock’s overclocking capabilities are about average, but the “average” of today’s contenders is fairly high from a historical perspective.
Gigabyte has the highest overall performance, yet its oversized PCB requires an eight-slot case simply to accomodate the board, and using its bottom slot to hold a double-slot graphics card requires a 10-slot case, since nine-slot models don’t exist. Owners of 10-slot cases will likely consider that the $240 890FXA-UD7 is the best four-card solution.
Anyone who wants to fit a similar four-card CrossFireX configuration into an eight-slot case will be happy to see that MSI’s $200 890FXA-GD70 is also $40 cheaper than its Gigabyte rival. Better still, buyers who don’t need space for that fourth double-slot graphics card will find that the 890FXA-GD70 actually fits in a standard seven-slot ATX chassis. Yet, MSI buyers must forgo a few minor features to get this lower price, such as the loss of one eSATA and one SATA port. They must also be willing to believe that MSI’s lower-cost five-phase voltage regulator is still durable enough to satisfy their overclocking needs over the long term.
Hardcore overclockers might put the Crosshair IV Formula on top of their lists, even though it didn’t win our basic overclocking tests. Instead, this is a board designed to support higher CPU current at higher voltage levels typically used in liquid nitrogen overclocking competitions. One might expect that altering a few settings on-the-fly could give them a special advantage in these types of competitions, and for that, Asus adds it RoG Connect feature. Its Go Button feature can also be handy for more basic on-the-fly changes without connecting a second system. ProbeIT allows tuners to more easily monitor voltage levels from a meter, and Asus even uses 10 high-capacity phases, rather than medium-duty parts, to help keep these voltage levels more consistent. But as nice a board as the Crosshair IV Formula is, its less-flexible slot spacing and reduced connectivity could make the value of this $230 model seem reasonable to professional overclockers.
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Because Crossfire and SLI are obviously utilised mainly by budget gamers.
It was time to make premium motherboards for the AMD platform. Asus, Gigabyte and MSI have done a great job.
It would have been nice to see the UD5 as well as the UD7. I am expecting that performance will be almost identical, making the UD5 a very interesting proposition
Is it me, or would it have been better to throw a 790FX board in there to show how much AMD have progressed?
These numbers basically say "Buy whatever is cheapest because you'll never notice a less than 1% performance difference." In this case, that makes the Biostar the clear winner because their prices are always lower. Gigabyte may have a 0.49% performance advantage but the BioStar TA890FX-E is only $140 at newegg.com while the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 is $246! Sorry Gigabyte, you lost badly here. Here is the price/performance ratio rankings among these boards (Which you know is exactly what AMD purchasers are looking for to begin with!):
Peformance vs. Price index = Performance number divided by newegg price multiplied by 100
Rank:
1. Biostar TA890FX-E $140 (p/p index of 71)
2. ASRock 890FX DELUXE3 $155 (p/p index of 64)
3. MSI 890FXA-GD70 $200 (p/p index of 50)
4. ASUS Crosshair IV $220 (p/p index of 45)
5. Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 $246 (p/p index of 41)
Make mine Biostar! In the useful lifetimes of these motherboards, nobody is going to use more than 4 PCI-Express x16 slots anyway.
I forgot one thing, the ASRock wins if you take USB 3.0 into account because the Biostar has only USB 2.0. It's really a trivial difference regardless of the fanfare that USB 3.0 has gotten lately because high speed drives will take advantage of eSATA-6 before they take advantage of USB 3.0 because eSATA-6 is faster. For small devices like flash drives that are 16GB and smaller (95% of the market would be my guess) the differences would be maybe 30 seconds for the entire transfer. Mice, keyboards, webcams, internet dongles, magicjacks and bluetooth adapters only require USB v1.x so it makes USB 3.0 all the more irrelevant because those are the primary uses for USB ports to date. Couple that with the fact that many keyboards and mice use PS/2 ports or USB to PS/2 adapters and it makes spending more money on USB 3.0 at this stage of the game even more crazy. Having said that, $15 is easy to swallow but I'd rather wait until I see if I really need USB 3.0 for anything and if I do, just buy a USB 3.0 PCI or PCI-Express card. If you're like me, so many things have been put onto the motherboard that most of my expansion slots sit empty anyway.
reported
Avro, my Asus 890FX will outperform your Biostar choice any day of the week when it comes to performance choices, and it looks the part as well, I know what i got for the price difference!
Moricon, I don't own a Biostar motherboard and the numbers posted by the author don't lie. Believe what you want. The overall performance difference between the two is listed as less than 1% but hey, whatever makes you feel good. I'll take the word of the article author with numbers up from his own tests rather than someone who doesn't want to feel like he threw his money away.
Ha, my bad ,though you had Biostar, re-read post and feel bit stupid, but still stand by my theory, under extreme OC my asus will wipe the floor for certain against Biostar.
They did not get anywhere near the limits with any of the boards, I have had my 1055t at 4.6ghz and it is able to go further i am sure, just am not prepared to go beyond 1.55v until bulldozer arrives for mid life replacement! Then this little x6 chip is going to scream under torture before releasing it into the wild!
I bought the Asus for more than the performance differences at stock and small OC.. like sata6 and usb3 as well as the Xfire capabilities of the board (I can get 3x5850 with 16x16x8x to fit in my Scout Lan case), the ease of OC and how it looks, yup! Definately how it looks, this is V important to me, as well as all the fan headers being PWM and no crappy legacy ide or floppy cluttering the board. But by far the best thing is being able to swith off all I/O off for stability under extreme OC, 320+fsb is fully capable on this board, Asus 890FX holds the record for AMD fsb at the moment (till the next revision round makes its way)
So yup, I feel that I would have paid at least another £20 on top of the £159 I paid for the board before i believed I was getting short changed!