Nvidia chipsets haven't been quite as popular these days as AMD chipsets since they bought ATI and also the success ATI has had with the quality of their integrated video parts. Also on the Intel side Intel basically has an exclusive license them selves to Core i7 CPUs. That said while Nvidia hasn't done any major revisions since the 750a and 780a chipsets there are still new motherboards being built around those chipsets. Today we'll be taking a look at one of these from Asus, the M4N72-E.

The Asus M4N72-E is based off of Nvidia's 750a chipset and is a Socket AM2+ motherboard but is built with support for the new Phenom II Socket AM3 processors as they are backwards compatible. The reverse is not true, you can't use a Socket AM2+ processor in a Socket AM3 motherboard so in a way Socket AM2+ is the most backwards compatible despite being an older interface.

Nvidia released the 780a chipset about a year ago but the price was a little too much for the price range you want in an AMD motherboard these days, and even with Phenom II being a much more powerful processor it's hard to drop as much on the motherboard as you are for a high-end processor. 750a is the mid-range fix for this with the main loss being only going to 19 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes allowing for 2-way SLI, not 3-way. Since even running SLI is not that common and especially 3 is incredibly rare thing to do and something where price/benefit starts to lose it's luster we don't think this is too much of a loss.

Unique features from Asus for the M4N72-E include support for DDR2 memory overclocked to 1.3GHz for higher bandwidth, an 8+1 phase power design for better overclocking and lower power consumption, and anti-surge protection. Asus also includes a lot of software with their motherboards to enable advanced features. This includes TurboV which allows for easier overclocking, TurboKey which allows the user to overclock with the push of a button, ExpressGate which is a tiny Linux distribution that ships with the motherboard that features a web browser, music player, Skype, and instant messaging capabilities, Q-Connector to allow for quick connection from the case front panel connectors to the motherboard, Q-Shield which removes the annoying metal tabs on the I/O shield with something that works instantly and is slightly padded.

BIOS features include O.C. profile which saves a user's custom BIOS, CrashFree Bios 2 which allows the user to recover a damaged BIOS, EZFlash 2 which allows for easy flashing from within the BIOS and MyLogo2 for a personal image for the boot screen rather than the standard Asus logo.

The M4N72-E has a good layout overall. There are two heatsinks one which covers the CPU and another which covers the chipsets in between the ports and the processor. The motherboard uses 4-pin CPU power, features two 16x PCI-Express slots which supports SLI, two additional PCI-E 1x slots, two PCI slots, 4 DDR2 DIMM sots on the rear next to the 24-pin ATX power, six SATA 2.0 ports, all next to one IDE connector. No floppy adapter on this board.

A close up shot of the two PCI-E 16x expansion slots, the one downside to ATI's dominance lately in the AMD chipset world is that there haven't been too many new motherboards with SLI support if you want to go that route and Nvidia's cards have been picking up in strength at least with the higher-end graphics market.

Here we see the IDE connector, SATA ports, and USB and Firewire front panel connectors.

4 DDR2 slots are featured, the Socket AM2+ socket, 24-pin ATX motherboard power, and 6 SATA ports.

The I/O devices on the back include six USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet, and 7.1 HD Realtek audio. One thing missing is the integrated video that comes with some 750a chipset based motherboards so keep that in mind if you're looking at this board: there is no onboard video output.

The bundle is fairly standard, I/O, SATA cables, case sticker, IDE and floppy cable, Asus Quick-Connectors, SLI adapter, and manual.

Technical specs from Asus.

CPU
AMD Socket AM2+ / AM2 Phenom™ X4/Phenom™ X3/Athlon™ /Athlon™ X2/Sempron™ AMD 140W CPU Support
AMD Cool 'n' Quiet™ Technology
Support AM3 Phenom™ II / Athlon™ X4 / Athlon™ X3 / Athlon™ X2 Processors
Support 45nm Phenom™ II CPU
Chipset
NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI
System Bus
Up to 5200 MT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0 interface for AM3/AM2+ CPU
2000 / 1600 MT/s for AM2 CPU
Memory
4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1300(O.C.)/1200(O.C.)/1066*/800/667 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture
*Due to AMD CPU limitation, DDR2 1066 is supported by AM3/AM2+ CPU for one DIMM per channel only. Refer to www.asus.com for the memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists).
**Due to OS limitation, when installing total memory of 4GB capacity or more, Windows® 32-bit operation system may only recognize less than 3GB. Hence, a total installed memory of less than 3GB is recommended.
Expansion Slots
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (Single x16 or Dual x8)
2 x PCIe x1
2 x PCI 2.2
Multi-GPU Support
Support NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology at x8 link
Storage

NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI chipset
- 1 x Ultra DMA 133 / 100
- 6 x SATA 3Gb/s ports (Legacy IDE operation is only supported on drives 1–4.)
- NVIDIA® MediaShield™ RAID supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD
LAN
Realtek 8211CL Gigabit/10 LAN controller featuring AI NET 2
Audio
VIA1708S 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- Supports Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking
- Optical S/PDIF Out ports at back I/O
- ASUS Noise Filtering
IEEE 1394
VIA VT6315N controller supports 2 x 1394a ports
USB
12 xUSB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 6 ports at back panel)
ASUS Unique Features

ASUS Power Saving Solutions:
- 8+1 Phase Power Design
- ASUS Anti-Surge Protection
ASUS Green Design:
- EPU
*ASUS EPU is supported by AM3/AM2+ CPU only
- ASUS AI Nap
Express Gate
ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution:
- ASUS Fanless Design:stylish heatsink solution
- ASUS Q-Fan2
ASUS EZ DIY:
- ASUS Q-Connector
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 2
- ASUS O.C. Profile
- ASUS EZ Flash 2
Overclocking Features
Intelligent overclocking tools
- AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
-TurboV
-Turbo Key
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)
- FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 600MHz at 1MHz increment
- Memory tuning from 533MHz up to 1066MHz
Overclocking Protection
- ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Special Features
100% All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors! (5000hrs VRM, over 57 years operation lifespan at 65∘C)
ASUS MyLogo 2
Back Panel I/O Ports
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
1 x IEEE 1394a
1 x LAN(RJ45) port
6 x USB 2.0/1.1
8 -Channel Audio I/O
Internal I/O Connectors
3 x USB connectors (6 ports)
1 x Floppy disk drive connector
1 x IDE connector
6 x SATA connectors
1 x IEEE 1394a connector
1 x CPU Fan connector
1 x Chassis Fan connector
1 x Power Fan connector
1 x S/PDIF Out connector
Front panel audio connector
Chassis Intrusion connector
1 x COM connector
CD audio in
24-pin ATX Power connector
4-pin ATX 12V Power connector
System Panel (Q-Connector)
BIOS
8 Mb Flash ROM
AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0, ASUS EZ Flash 2, CrashFree BIOS 2
Accessories
User's manual
1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
4 x SATA cable
I/O Shield
Support Disc
Drivers
ASUS PC Probe II
Express Gate
ASUS AI Suite
Anti-virus software (OEM version)
ASUS Update
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor
12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )

The BIOS is a fairly standard advanced Asus BIOS layout with all the tweaking you needs for overclocking, power consumption, and adjusting your build exactly how you want it.

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit with ATI Catalyst 9.5 drivers and nForce 15.26.

 

The board seems to take slightly less power than the Asus M3A78-T probably because of the onboard video of the 790GX or possibly DDR3 taking slightly less power.

Not a major difference in transfer speed but the 790GX chipset comes out slightly on top.

Overclocking the motherboard we had some mixed results compared to the 790GX Asus M3A78-T, though the HyperTransport bus alone was able to go 200MHz above the 790GX overclocking our Phenom II X3 720 BE the processor came in 200MHz lower at 3.6GHz compared to 3.8GHz. The Nvidia chipests in general don't seem to overclock quite as well with AMD processors as ATI's but here we do see the bus went higher but we'd still prefer the CPU over the bus.

Although one doesn't have to upgrade from the Socket AM2+ motherboards for AMD's new AM3 processors to work if you're starting fresh going with a Socket AM3 based motherboard is probably the better way to go in the long run as DDR2 production ramps down prices are already starting to increase while DDR3 prices decrease. Today we'll be taking a look at a new AM3 board from ASRock, the M3A790GXH/128M.

We don't normally touch upon the box too much but this one looks quite cool with a reflective hologram surface, vibrant bright red background and a silver Dragon representing AMD's Platform and holding Fusion. All of the starbursts are also pretty well designed from a marketing standpoint, good job ASRock. This color is sure to get some people's attention if they're out at Fry's or another retailer.

Here's the back of the box which also features a hologram and technical information on the motherboard.

Inside the box we see all the accessories. Included are 4 SATA cables, one SATA to molex power adapter, floppy cable, driver and utility CDs, I/O shield, and ASRock X/Fire switch card.

Though the box might be bright red the PCB of the board is ASRock standard blue with a few neon highlights in the CPU clip and PCI-Express slots. Overall the board layout is fairly solid, the CPU power is out of the way enough from the CPU socket so if you're using a massive heatsink for overclocking it's still easily reachable or trying to remove the power adapter in the case. All too often CPU power is right to the case and the motherboard at the top in a difficult position. Even the IDE connector is out of the way of the PCI-E 16x slot so it shouldn't get in the way of any graphics card. Our main complaint isn't with the layout at all but actually the switch card which is necessary to enable Crossfire which is a relic of days past. We're not sure if this saves ASRock much money but we do hope they'd move on by now to the board automatically detecting other cards. Everything else with the layout is good though.

Everything is here for video output including VGA, DVI, and HDMI connectors. The board also features a hefty six USB 2.0 ports which we like to see, one PS/2 port, optical audio output, 7.1 analog audio output, Gigabit Ethernet, E-SATA, and Firewire. Not much more you need here.

Here we see one PCI-Express 1x slot followed by a 16X PCI-Express slot, another 16x slot, a PCI slot, a 16X PCI-Express slot, and a PCI slot.

The copper, green, and neon orange of the heatsink clip blend together pretty well to make the motherboard much more vibrant.

Here we see the DDR3 slots for the motherboard and the rated speed up to DDR3 1600 for the board.

Four SATA slots are on the side of the board with two more slots on top. We also see the Southbridge heatsink and IDE connector just above the PCI-E slot as well as the Crossfire toggle switch.

The BIOS is very customizable and easy to overlcock and tweak and also full of all the important information and settings one requires. It seems to be a big improvement over the ASRock BIOS of years past.

For those curious we tested with a Phenom II X3 720 BE which does feature a fourth core and when we enabled ACC in the BIOS it did detect it and it worked great with the ASRock 1.01 BIOS. We're not sure how long this will work or what batch of processors have a fourth core but in our case it worked with this board and our CPU.

Another unique feature to this board is ASRock's instant boot which is basically an enhanced S3/S4 mode. After you shutdown the system reboots automatically and goes into suspend mode so you have basically a fresh running computer when you boot back up from suspend. Here's ASRock's chart on this.

Overclocking the HyperTransport bus we hit 2.3GHz stable which is a good overclock. We also overclocked the GPU of the 790GX and topped out around 900MHz which is pretty standard for this chipset.

Here are the technical specs from ASRock.

CPU - Support for Socket AM3 processors: AMD Phenom™ II X4 / X3 (except 920 / 940) and Athlon II X4 / X3 / X2 processors
- Supports CPU up to 140W
- Supports AMD OverDrive™ with ACC feature (Advanced Clock Calibration)
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology
Chipset - Northbridge: AMD 790GX
- Southbridge: AMD SB750
Memory - Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology
- 4 x DDR3 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR3 1600(OC)/1333/1066/800 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, NB Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS
Audio, Video and Networking
Graphics - Integrated AMD Radeon HD 3300 graphics
- DX10 class iGPU, Pixel Shader 4.0
- Max. shared memory 512MB
- Integrated 128MB side port memory for iGPU (DDR3 1333)
- Three VGA Output options: D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI
- Supports HDCP function
- Supports Full HD 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback
Audio - 7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection
- DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec)
- DTS (Digital Theater Systems) support
LAN - PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Realtek RTL8111DL
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
Expansion / Connectivity
Slots - 3 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (green @ x16 mode, blue @ x8 mode, orange @ x4 mode)
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot
- 2 x PCI slots
- Supports ATI™ CrossFireX™, Hybrid CrossFireX™ and 3-Way CrossFireX™
Connector - 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10 and JBOD), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 1 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector (shared with 1 SATAII port)
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x IR header
- 1 x COM port header
- 1 x IEEE 1394 header
- 1 x HDMI_SPDIF header
- CPU/Chassis/NB/Power FAN connector
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 8 pin 12V power connector
- SLI/XFire power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 3 x USB 2.0 headers (support 6 USB 2.0 ports)
Rear Panel I/O I/O Panel
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x VGA/D-Sub Port
- 1 x VGA/DVI-D Port
- 1 x HDMI Port
- 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
- 1 x IEEE 1394 Port
- 1 x eSATAII Port
- 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
- HD Audio Jack: Side Speaker / Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
Other Features / Miscellaneous
Unique Feature - ASRock OC Tuner
- Intelligent Energy Saver
- Instant Boot
- Hybrid Booster:
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version), AMD OverDrive™ Utility, AMD Live! Explorer, AMD Fusion
Accessories - 1 x ASRock SLI/XFire Switch Card
- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 4 x SATA Data Cables (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)
Hardware Monitor - CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU/Chassis/NB/Power Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 8.8-in, 30.5 cm x 22.4 cm
- All Solid Capacitor design (100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors)
OS - Microsoft® Windows® XP / XP Media Center / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, WHQL

Our test system was Windows Vista Premium SP1 64-bit. ATI Catalist 9.4 was the driver revision. We tested only the onboard video.

The AM3 board sees a 1fps gain over the Asus in our first benchmark with Crysis.

Unreal Tournament 3 is basically identical.

PCMark 05 sees a bigger difference between the two with the AM3 board coming out on top.

Basically identical graphics performance in 3D rendering with Cinebench.

DDR2 appears to consume slightly more power than DDR3 memory.

As you might be aware Intel's new Core i7 processors require an entirely new socket, DDR3 memory, and feature other large changes such as an integrated memory controller. The first wave of motherboards to come out for the LGA1366 Socket were very expensive choices but since then we've seen come out with somewhat lower price ranges. We'll be looking at one of these boards today with Asus P6T motherboard.

The P6T

The Asus P6T is very similar to the step-up Asus P6T Deluxe. The major difference is that the P6T uses 8+2 phase power rather than 16+2 on the Deluxe which should allow the Deluxe to obtain some slightly higher overclocks. Other differences include support for 24GB of RAM on the P6T Deluxe as opposed to 12GB of RAM on the P6, 2 SAS ports and uses a Marvell controller for SATA, eSATA, and PATA as opposed to JMicron. Last but not least there are two Marvel Gigabit ports on the P6T as opposed to a single Realtek Gigabit LAN. The layout aesthetics are also a little different with the P6T Deluxe putting a third PCI-E 16x slot next to another 16X PCI-E slot. If you were to do triple Crossfire or SLI and try and use a dual slot card for that slot that would of course block access to that other 16x slot.

Here we see the CPU power connector, the heatsink surrounding the chipset and CPU. The power adapter should be easy to get to although sometimes it can be a tight fit when it is directly against the PC case. The heatsink is slightly smaller than the P6T Deluxe but we don't find the X58 to be too hot of a chipset in general. There are also mounting holes on the X58 there for a Socket 775 heatsink as well if one was wanting to use that.

Here we see the PCI expansion slots with three PCI-Express 16x slots, two in blue and a third in white in between two PCI slots. In-between the two PCI-E 16x slots is one PCI-E slot. You also can notice the Southbridge heatsink which is fairly small but you don't need much these days for the Southbridge so it should be more than enough.

As far as expansion ports there's an IDE controller and six SATA ports on the side of the motherboard with an additional two vertically above the PCI-E 16x slot.

Here we see the triple channel memory slots which Asus supports of to 2000MHz overclocked.

Bundled with the motherboard is the Asus manual, drivers on a CD, IDE cable, four SATA cables, a 3-way SLI card, SLI ribbon, and a I/O panel for the case.

Technical specs from Asus:

CPU Intel® Socket 1366 Core™ i7 Processor Extreme Edition/Core™ i7 Processor Supports Intel® Dynamic Speed Technology
Chipset Intel® X58 / ICH10R
System Bus Up to 6400 MT/s ; Intel® QuickPath Interconnection
Memory 6 x DIMM, Max. 24 GB, DDR3 2000(O.C.)*/1866(O.C.)*/1800(O.C.)*/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Triple channel memory architecture
Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
*Hyper DIMM (DDR3 1800MHz or above) support is subject to the physical characteristics of individual CPUs.
**Refer to www.asus.com. Or user manual for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendor Lists.)
Expansion Slots 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (at x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8 mode)
1 x PCIe x4
2 x PCI
Multi-GPU Support Supports NVIDIA® 2-Way or Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
Supports ATI® CrossFireX™ Technology
Storage Southbridge
6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10 Marvell 88SE6320 2 x SAS (RAID 0 and 1)
Marvell 88SE6111
1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
1 xExternal SATA port (SATA On-the-Go)

LAN Dual Gigabit LAN controllers 2*Marvell88E8056® PCIe Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
Audio ADI® AD2000B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- Support Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking
- Coaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O
IEEE 1394 VIA® VT6308 controller supports 1 x 1394a ports (one at mid-board; one at back panel)
USB 14 USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 8 ports at back panel)
ASUS Unique Features ASUS Exclusive Features:
- ASUS TurboV
- ASUS True 16+2 Phase Power Design
- Express Gate SSD
ASUS Power Saving Solution
- ASUS EPU-6 Engine
- ASUS AI Nap
ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution:
- ASUS Fanless Design: Wind-Flow Heat-pipe solution
- ASUS Fanless Design: Stack Cool 2
- ASUS Fan Xpert
- ASUS Optional Fan for Water-cooling or Passive-Cooling only
ASUS Crystal Sound:
- ASUS Noise Filter
ASUS EZ DIY:
- ASUS Q-Shield
- ASUS Q-Connector
- ASUS O.C. Profile
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
- ASUS EZ Flash 2
Overclocking Features ASUS TurboV utility
Precision Tweaker2:
- vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.00625V increment
- vCPU PLL: 36-step reference voltage control
- vDRAM Bus: 49-step DRAM voltage control
- vChipset(N.B.): 31-step chipset voltage control
- vNB-PCIe: 65-step chipset-PCIe voltage control
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)
- Internal Base Clock tuning from 100MHz up to 500MHz at 1MHz increment - PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to180MHz at 1MHz increment
Overclocking Protection:
- ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Special Features Multi-language BIOS
ASUS MyLogo 2
Back Panel I/O Ports 1 x PS/2 Keyboard/ Mouse combo port
1 x S/PDIF Out (Coaxial + Optical)
1 x External SATA
1 x IEEE1394a
2 x RJ45 port
8 x USB 2.0/1.1
8-channel Audio I/O
Internal I/O Connectors 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports
1 x Floppy disk drive connector
1 x IDE connector
6 x SATA connectors
2 x SAS connectors
1 x CPU Fan connector
3 x Chassis Fan connector
1 x Power Fan connector
1 x IEEE1394a connector
Front panel audio connector
1 x S/PDIF Out Header
Chassis Intrusion connector
CD audio in
24-pin ATX Power connector
1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector
System Panel(Q-Connector)
BIOS 16 Mb Flash ROM
AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
Manageability WfM 2.0,DMI 2.0,WOL by PME,WOR by PME,PXE
Accessories UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
6 x Serial ATA cables
2 x SAS cables
ASUS Q-Shield
User's manual
2 in 1 Q-connector
1 x 2-port USB2.0 / 1-port IEEE1394 (4-pin) module
1 x SLI bridge cable
2 x Screw pillar
1 x Optional Fan for Water-Cooling or Passive-Cooling only
Support Disc Drivers
ASUS PC Probe II
ASUS Update
ASUS AI Suite
Anti-virus software (OEM version)
Image-Editing Suite
Form Factor ATX Form Factor
12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )

Here's the general setup BIOS screen with basic information here.

Moving to AI Tweaker we see some of the possible adjustments to overclock your computer's processor, memory, and transport speeds.

Here's the advanced screen with controls for the CPU ratio, C1E power support, Virtualization, and more. As well we see the full CPU details.

USB Configuration is here which also lists enabling and disabling of USB devices

Fairly self-explanatory here with Boot Settings.

Finally here we have the controls for ExpressGate and Asus EZFlash as well as a few other Asus utilities.

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit with the latest X58 drivers from Asus and ATI Catalyst 8.12 drivers. We didn't have another X58 motherboard to compare it to so instead we have some benchmarks against a Phenom II X4 940 with the Asus M3A79T motherboard.

Intel's Core i7 seems to do very well quad core benchmarks and here it flies in the Valve Particle benchmark almost doubling the score again.

Crysis shows where the Core i7 struggles with dual core and gaming performance only edging out the Phenom II by a few frames per second.

For Gigabit the Core i7 was able to just top the Asus 790GX motherboard.

Sapphire is more dominant in their graphics division but they've also been heavily pushing motherboards for a number of years as well and the quality has trended towards only getting better. Today we'll be looking at one of their newest motherboards based off of AMD's excellent 790GX chipset, the Sapphire PURE 790GX.

Similar to their graphics cards Sapphire's 790GX motherboard uses a dark blue PCB. The coloring scheme continues with a red colored slot for the primary PCI-E 16x slot and a blue for the secondary. There's a custom heatsink on the Southbridge which resembles a pinwheel or sun shaped. Blue and yellow mark the DDR2 DIMM slots. Overall an aesthetically pleasing motherboard and matching of Sapphire's colors.

We had no problems with the placement on the motherboard and install was a breeze. The CPU power is pretty easy to get into besides the larger passive heatsink. That Northbridge heatsink is also out of the way enough to allow for larger heatsinks overall a very clean setup and nothing too out of the ordinary.

Four DDR2 800/1066 slots, 24-pin power, IDE connector, floppy connector are all tugged nicely together in the corner.

Two PCI-Express 16x slots with two PCI-E 1x slots and two PCI slots.

Six SATA 2.0 ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support. There is also a reset and power switch above the SATA ports and a diagnostic LED onboard the motherboard in the bottom right. This can come in very handy for those times when something isn't working or if you do a lot of work with your motherboard outside of your case.

External ports include a PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, HDMI video output, VGA output, and DVI output covering all video output but DisplayPort which really hasn't caught on as a standard. There are four USB 2.0 ports on the back and though you can always add more with the internal headers six would be nice such as on boards from ASRock and Asus.

Taking a look at the technical features of the motherboard, as mentioned it uses AMD's latest chipset, the AMD 790GX for the Northbridge with integrated graphics and Sideport memory and for the SouthBridge the AMD SB750. Both care of the designers at ATI. This motherboard supports both the Socket AM2, AM2+, and new AM3 processors. We tested and verified this our selves with our Phenom II X3 720 BE Socket AM3 processor.

The onboard video is the ATI Radeon HD 3300 GPU which supports DirectX 10 with an adjustable GPU clock in the BIOS and support for ATI Hybrid and Crossfire X tech We've tested this GPU before and it definitely is more than enough for your average consumer and can play some modern games on the lowest settings but anyone who does even casual gaming with anything that uses 3D should probably look to upgrade with the current bargains. Full Blu-Ray playback is supported. 128MB of DDR2 sideport memory is included onboard.
 

Here are the technical specs from Sapphire.

CPU
Supports AMD Socket AM2+/AM2:
AMD Phenom FX/Phenom processors
Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron processors
Chipset
AMD™ 790GX Chipset + AMD™SB750 Chipset
Hyper Transport Bus
HT 3.0
Memory
Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
4 * 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots
Supports DDR2 1066/800 non-ECC ,un-buffered memory
Max.16GB
Expansion Slots
2 * 32-bit PCI Slots
2 * PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (X8+X8 or X16+switch card)
2 * PCI Express x1
Storage
AMD™SB750 Southbridge Chipset :
6 * Serial ATA2 3Gb/s connectors
Supports HDDs with RAID 0, 1,5,10 functions
1 * Ultra DMA 133 / 100 / 66 IDE connector
Audio
Realtek ALC888 HD Audio CODEC with 8-Channel
Ethernet LAN
Realtek RTL8111C PCI Express Gigabit NIC
USB
Embedded 12 * USB 2.0/1.1
Special Features
Advanced Power Design that supports the latest Socket-AM2 + / AM3 CPU
BIOS 7-Segment Debug LED
Support ACPI S3
ATI Hybrid graphics technology to enhance graphic performance max to 70%~80% with ATI Radeon HD2400 / HD3400 series graphics card
ATI CrossFireX technology to do H/W CrossFire by multi graphic engines
Internal Graphic core RV610 support DX10
“IMAGE IT!” System Backup Software and “ProMagicPLUS!” System Recovery System
Rear Panel I / O
4 * USB 2.0/1.1 ports
1 * PS/2 mouse & keyboard port
1 * VGA port + 1 * DVI port + 1 * HDMI port
1 * RJ-45 port
1 * 8 CH HD Audio I / O port
Internal I / O
4 * USB 2.0/1.1 headers for 8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
CPU / Chassis Fan connectors
1 * 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector
1 * 24-pin ATX Power connector
1 * Serial Port of 9-pin block
CD / AUX Audio in
1 * Ultra DMA 133 / 100 / 66 IDE connector + 1 * Floppy connector
1 * HDMI_SPDIF header + 1 * IR header
BIOS
Award 8MB SPI Flash ROM
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor(305 x 245mm)

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In the first screenshot we see the BIOS setup options, the second shows off the standard CMOS features, the third Advanced BIOS features with boot priority, CPU cache control and more.

HT Link control, HDMI audio, and memory hole management is in Advanced Chipset Features is in the first screenshot. Next is the PCIE Configuration, then the Internal Graphics Configuration.

The first screenshot shows the integrated peripherals, then power management setup, then the PC Health Status.

Here we see the overclock controls built into the BIOS. Pretty much everything you need and more.

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit with ATI Catalyst 8.12 drivers.

3DMark is a synthetic benchmark and can gives us quite different results but is very popular so we included it. Here we see the Asus edge out the Sapphire but we'll see how things do in game testing.

In Crysis we see near identical performance with only .5fps between the Sapphire and the Asus with the Sapphire winning this round.

Again testing the bandwidth of the Gigabit ports with Sandra 2009 on a local LAN we see near identical results just shy of 8 megabytes a second.

We used HDTach to measure the average read speed of the boards and random access speeds.The Sapphire comes out on top again but this is basically close enough to be just some variables in results. Both boards use the SB750 chipset.

We've looken at a fair share of motherboards based off AMD's 700 series chipset. Probably one of the names most hardware enthusiasts don't think of immediately is ECS but they've been trying to put out some more enthusiast geared motherboards. Today we'll be looking at one of these the 790GX based A790GXM-A motherboard.

As with all 790GX motherboards currently there are no micro-ATX versions and this board is full ATX. Two 16x PCI-Express slots are there for Crossfire support, two PCI-Express slots, and two PCI slots onboard. In addition to that you have six SATA adapters, an IDE slot, 4 DDR2 1066 slots for memory expansion. The cooling should be adequate for the Northbridge and Southbridge of the ECS motherboard. You can see one unusual thing is the location of the 8-pin for CPU power. On the board you can also see USB headers in addition to a power on and reset switch onboard the motherboard next to the SATA ports.

External connectors include a PS2 mouse and keyboard port, VGA cable, HDMI output, six USB 2.0 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, onboard HD song with digital out and a com port. We'd prefer personally to lose the com port in favor of E-SATA, Firewire, or a DVI output.

A closer look at the black PCB and the coloring on the PCI slots.

And here's the SB750 Southbridge on the board.
 

The hardware bundle is the basics with four SATA cables, IDE cable, floppy cable, and I/O shield.

Here are the technical specs from ECS.

CPU
AMD Phenom™ processor (Socket AM2+) / AMD Athlon™ 64 FX / Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core/ Athlon™ 64 / Sempron processor
High-performance HyperTransport 3.0 CPU Interface
Support transfer rate up to 5200 mega-transfers per second
CHIPSET
AMD® 790GX & AMD® SB750
North Bridge: AMD® 790GX
South Bridge: AMD® SB750
GRAPHICS
On Chip (AMD 790GX-based with ATI™ Radeon HD3300 graphics )
Integrated DirectX 10 graphics processor
AMD SidePort Memory : DDR2-800 (64Mx16=128MB)
MEMORY
Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 32GB
Support DDR2 1066/800/667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM *
*Currently ,the memory maximum size we have tested is 8 GB(2 GB per dimm)
EXPANSION SLOT
2 x PCI Express x16 slots
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
2 x PCI slots
STORAGE
Support by AMD SB750
6 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices
RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID 10 configuration
AUDIO
Realtek ALC 888S supports 8-channel HD audio
Compliant with HD specification
LAN
2 x Realtek RTL 8111C Gigabit Fast Ethernet NIC
REAR PANEL I/O
1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
6 x USB ports
2 x Gigabit Ethernet Port
1 x COM Port
1 x Audio port (1Line in, 4x Line out, 1 Optical SPDIF Out)
1 x VGA port
1 x HDMI Port
INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS
1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply Connector & 8-pin 12V Connector
1 x 4-pin 12V Connector
CPUFAN/PWRFAN/SYSFAN connectors
1 x FDD connector
1 x IDE connector
6 x Serial ATA connectors
1 x Speaker header
1 x Front panel switch/LED header
1 x Front panel audio header
1 x SPDIF out header
3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports
1 x Power button/1 x Reset button
SYSTEM BIOS
AMI BIOS with 8Mb SPI Flash ROM
Supports Plug and Play, STR/STD, Hardware monitor, Multi Boot, DMI,HDCP
Supports ACPI revision 3.0 specification
Support over-clocking
ECS M.I.B. utility
FORM FACTOR
ATX Size 305mm*244mm

The ECS board's BIOS is fairly easy to tweak with different settings. Not very unique features here but definitely much more than what you'd get with a typical ECS motherboard.

We used an Athlon X2 4000+ and it overclocked fairly easily a couple hundred MHz. Nothing amazing but fairly good. Unfortunately we were unable to test Advanced Clock Calibration and in fact a major problem we had with the board was that none of our quad core Phenom processors were stable with this board. This of course could be a problem for people, we believe our board was just a fluke as we've seen a number of other reviews where they had no problems with Phenoms. Our Phenoms though definitely work great and have in the dozens of other Socket AM2 or AM2+ motherboard we've tested. The exact problem we're unsure of though, perhaps better quality capacitors might have helped. The X2 however we didn't encounter issues with this but it does raise some concerns of the past of ECS quality.

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit with Forceware 180.

Due to our board's inability to run stable Phenom processors we had to run our benchmarks on an X2 4000+ we didn't have as many numbers as we would have. That said the 790GX chipset still performed well in fact we decided to see how would a plain 780G motherboard with a AMD's current best Phenom 9950 BE and our 790GX board with a much slower X2 4000+.

Amazingly even though the 780G board boasts two more cores, a faster processor at a faster clockspeed with the 790GX it is only 100 points behind. The GPU really is more important.

In PCMark which tests general PC performance the ECS with the much slower processor does come out quite a bit behind unlike as in 3DMark.