Posts Tagged ‘SATA 3.06Gb/s Hard Drive’

March 4th, 2010
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AMD Launches 6 Core CPU-ready 890GX Mobo

This board is prepped for the hexacore AMD Phenom II X6.

AMD and its motherboard partners today released the AMD 890GX Chipset, integrated with the ATI Radeon HD 4290, and are designed to be compatible with the upcoming AMD Phenom II X6 six-core processor.

The AMD 890GX Chipset supports the SATA 3.0 6Gb/s hard drive interface and many AMD 890GX-based motherboards feature SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support.

We’ve got our hands on the Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H, the Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3, and the MSI 890GXM-G65. After putting them through a barrage of tests, our reviews department found that AMD’s SB850 southbridge is probably the best reason to select an 890GX motherboard over the products it replaces thanks to the new integrated SATA 6Gb/s controller.AMD’s chipsets have long provided great features for the money, especially compared to high-end platforms like X48 and X58 from its chief rival, Intel. Everything between the mid-priced (still high-end) 790FX to its more commonplace integrated-graphics products can be attractive, depending on your usage model.

AMD’s multi-monitor advantage comes from the way it separates PCIe and GPU functions to deliver sixteen PCIe 2.0 lanes to graphics cards (up to two) without sacrificing integrated graphics functionality. Its Catalyst driver package controls both onboard and discrete Radeon graphics controllers simultaneously, seamlessly managing multiple desktop configurations. The three boards in today’s roundup have another advantage over those of our recent H55 comparison, in that those products didn’t support DVI dual-link mode for extra-large displays.

Another advantage today’s motherboards have over the Intel H55-based competition is the chipset’s additional PCIe 2.0 lanes, one of which supplies each of today’s motherboards with the same USB 3.0 controller at its full 5.0 Gb/s interface bandwidth. Intel’s chipset lanes run at half-speed, so that two lanes and a costly PCIe switch are required to reach the controller’s maximum throughput.

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