TEntel

I just got my new motherboard and I am very happy with it. Searching the web, I haven't been able to find any reviews on it, so I figure I'll write up a little something.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131368

It is an AM2+ board using the 790GX chipset.

I’ll be pairing this with a Phenom I 8750x3 BE.


Box Contents: It comes with the standard stuff such as SATA cables and ide cables. I was disappointed that the quality of the contents was not up to the standards of my last Asus board, the M3A32-MVP Deluxe. Of course that was a much higher end board and I wouldn’t expect to see mosfet fans to use with water cooling. However, it did not come with any crossfire bridges and the i/o panel is very flimsy, unlike the MVP which had a very nice black i/o panel with white printed text labeling each opening.

Board Layout: The CPU socket and DIMM slots are as one would expect. I was disappointed to see that the CPU used only a 4-pin rather than 8-pin power connector. This can potentially lead to less stability.
I was pleased to note that the mosfets have a decent sized heatsink on them. The heatsink on the northbridge is much larger than the one on the M3A32-MVP.

The expansion slots are arranged as such:
PCI-E 2.0 x8
PCI-E x1
PCI-E x1
PCI-E 2.0 x16
PCI
PCI

Interestingly, the x16 slot is on the bottom. This can be good or bad depending on whether or not you need those PCI slots. It is nice because if you are using only one card, it will be far away from the CPU.

BIOS: The bios is almost exactly the same as the MVPs. I navigated through it effortlessly. It has all the same overclocking options.

A couple notable things: ACC Unleash Mode. For unlocking cores.

PC surround view: If you are using discrete graphics, you can still enable the onboard graphics to run additional monitors.


Express Gate: This board can boot a built in Linux OS before it gets to the post screen. You can go online and view pictures. This is nice I guess, but Windows boots in less than thirty seconds anyways and I usually just put my PC to sleep.

Installing Windows: I didn’t have to. It booted up my previous installation of Windows and found and installed all the drivers! Awesome!

Overclocking: This is what you’ve been waiting for. On my M3A32-MVP deluxe, the highest stable OC I could achieve was 2.9 GHz at 1.4625v. 232x12. That board really didn’t like high multis, and I could barely post at 3 GHz even with 1.5 vcore.

My results have been much better with this new board:
It seems to like high multis and so far I’ve been able to post at 3.26 GHz at 1.4625v.

Here is my highest stable OC so far:


That’s an 800 MHz OC out of a Phenom I!! She definitely has more left in her too. As far as ACC is concerned I’ve just been taking random shots in the dark. The options go from +2 to +12 and -2 to -12. I have yet to methodically determine optimal settings for that.


I hope people find this helpful. It was helpfull for me to practice touch typing.

I’ll update this as I get higher OCs.

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WMP12>>320 KB/s mp3>>HT Omega Claro>>Audio Technica ATH-A700

jaclipse

I just set my acc to auto and that helped me squeeze out a few extra mhz's. You should take a look at amd overdrive if you haven't already. It allows you to adjust acc in windows

BlackOmega

Right on, good ocing board it seems. And your temps are nice and cool, you should definitely be able to get more out of her.

The only thing that came to mind when I was reading the expansion slot layout was the placement of the primary GPU. If you're using a dedicated sound card, having the GPU right next to it will lead to distortion, I think most audiophiles would be peeved about that.

Other than that it looks great.

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