It was a busy end of the year with all the new product releases and announcements. We saw the release of the new AMD FX processor lineup which did not fair well overall, but still serves me well in my personal rig. However, a CPU is only as great as the motherboard to which you pair it. While many sites used the AMD issued ASUS Crossfire V 990FX boards for their initial reviews (a great board I might add) we were able to use something different for our tests. The GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 we found to be a very competent board, but let’s take a closer look to find out what else this motherboard brings to the table.
Features and Specifications
The biggest new feature of the AMD 900 series chipsets is the support for Nvidia SLI for up to three GPUs in a triple SLI setup. This is in addition to the support for CrossfireX for up to three GPUs. The board has a total of five PCIe 2.0 x16 slots with two fixed at x4 speed, one fixed at x8 speed, and two up to the full x16 speed. Above these slots is a PCIe x1 slot and below them is a single PCI slot for legacy devices like many audio cards.
The board sports six 6 Gbps SATA ports connected directly to the AMD SB950, two additional eSATA ports (one being a USB/eSATA) on the back panel, and two more 3 Gbps SATA ports with the four additional ports supplied by two Marvell 88SE9172 controllers. There are a total of four USB 3.0 ports (two on the back panel and one onboard header) provided by two Etron EJ168 chips. There was no IDE as there was little room left after all of the above connectivity options.
The other standard ports are mostly located on the back IO panel and include PS/2, Firewire, Ethernet using the Realtek 8111E, and HD audio using the Realtek ALC889, a COM port.
The GIGABYTE 990FX-UD5 also has support for the GIGABYTE TouchBIOS, Turbo XHD automatic RAID 0 tool, CloudOC, Ultra Durable 3 all Japans Caps, AutoGreen via Blutooth, and a dual BIOS system. Its as if every feature GIGABYTE offers was crammed into this board for a reasonable $179.99 US.
What’s in the Box?
The box of goodies is slightly different this time around due to the SLI support. The box still has your standard manual, quick installation guide, 4 all black SATA cables, two case badges, I/O back panel shield and driver disk. The standard package is topped off with two SLI bridges: A flexible bridge for two card configuration and a stiff bridge for 3-way SLI. This is a new package item for all AMD 990FX series boards.
Another thing to note about the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 is the black color scheme. Almost every other motherboard for GIGABYTE comes in a white box, while the UD5 box is mostly black with green highlights. It also sports a glossy finish instead of the flat matte color I am use to from GIGABYTE, though this may simply be reserved for their top of the line boards.
Test System and Notes
I am using the same testing system I used during my initial AMD FX-8150 CPU review. The difference this time around is I added in audio and I/O testing for the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 as well as updated drivers and software to bring things a little more up to date. As we all know, baseline performance of all boards on the same chipset is roughly the same so testing implementations of components that can vary is an important part of our revaluation.
- CPUs: AMD FX-8150, Phenom II 1100T, & AMD A6-3650
- Motherboards: GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 Rev. 1.0, GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5, & GIGABYTE A75M-UD2H
- GPU: Reference Radeon HD 6850 1 GB @ stock
- RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 2133 MHz 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) kit @ 1866 MHz 9-10-9-27
- HDD: Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB
- PSU: Antec HCP 850W
- Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC889
- OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit & Windows 8 Dev. Preview
- USB 2.0: Corsair Flash Voyager 16 GB
- USB 3.0: Rosewill 3.25” Enclosure + Samsung SpinPoint F3 1 TB HDD with approx. 400 GB of data
You’ll see that we’ve decided to simply test the 990FXA-UD5 against its predecessor and price point APU sibling. We plan on reviewing both lower end and higher end variants of boards with the 990FX chipset onboard shortly so that we can make an even better assessment of this boards capabilities. But for now, this should serve as a starting point for anyone looking to make the jump from 890FX to 990FX.
Software
There is a lot of software involved when testing a motherboard. The motherboard in a PC easily has the most systems and interconnected components so we will need to cover a broad area of features. I will still try to narrow the focus as this board has been apart of the FX-8150 Part 2 review which covered a lot of the overclocking and CPU results.
- PCMark07
- 3DMark11
- Alien Vs. Predator
- Resident Evil 5
- Metro 2033
- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
- AIDA64 Extreme
- FurMark Burn-in
- RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3
- Handbrake 0.9.5
- Cinebench 11.5
Now that we’ve established the testing equipment and software, let’s get on with the testing and overclocking!
BIOS and Overclocking Notes
The current BIOS “F6” on the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 is the same tried and true BIOS used for years. Just download the manual from GIGABYTE and you’ll see. It’s better than trying to stare at pictures we’ve taken of the screen. As the 900 series chipset is largely unchanged when compared to the 800 series, there is simply little to change in the way of user features. While the background initialization done by the AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture) and power management which is very similar to the Phenom II Thuban processors.
You have the options to disable any integrated feature such as the USB 3.0 controller, additional SATA controller, Realtek HD audio, or even individual integer cores on an FX processor. I love having final say about what does and does not initialize with the start of my system.
Overclocking with the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 is very open ended. You have the options available to overclock the FSB or the multipliers. You just have to be sure you are providing enough voltage to the Northbridge, CPU, and HyperTransport to ensure stability.
Since we covered overclocking in great detail in part one and part two of our AMD FX launch article, we’ll just quickly summarize our findings. With the components above, I was able to use the CPU multiplier to get the FX-8150 up to 4.74 GHz. This did require disabling Turbo and increasing the voltages a little. With the CPU at stock settings I was about to get the FSB up to 236 MHz (200 MHz being default). Above 230 MHz, the UD5 locks the multiplier for the CPU, Northbridge, and HyperTransport to set minimums. I believe this is to ensure these components can keep up with the rate of speed the FSB is set to as other parts are affected by the FSB speed.
Everything considered, I found the overclocking on the UD5 to be simple and straight forward. Whenever the board was unstable, it would simply boot the default settings with no need to worry with reset jumpers or leaving my case open. Add in the option to save up to 6 different BIOS profiles and you can’t go wrong here.
Now on with the testing!
Overall Synthetic System Performance (PCMark 07)
Once again, PCMark07 tests your entire system as it responses to a battery of test. These test are run three times to ensure accuracy, though hiccups do occur. While the motherboard is not directly being tested here, it handles all connectivity and can greatly affect the performance of components installed in your system.
Not all of these test are mutli-threaded where the FX-8150 has an advantage. Entertainment and lightweight testing are single threaded tests. While the Phenom II 1100T should have a hefty advantage here, the 990FXA-UD5 keeps things very close compared to its 890FXA-UD5 counterpart.
CPU Performance (Cinebench 11.5)
To elaborate on why I believe the 990FXA-UD5 has better I/O, lets compare the raw performance of the two CPUs being tested with Cinebench 11.5.
As you can see the 1100T should have a 13.5% advantage in single thread application. An advantage it did not seem to have in the PCMark11 test. Please keep in mind that memory bandwidth could also be a factor here, so lets look at actual I/O Performance.
I/O Performance (CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1)
In these test I used CrystalDiskMark 3 to get the best average performance score in several I/O throughput tests. Since these test are not CPU limited, I am comparing the 990FXA-UD5 to the GIGABYTE A75M-UD2H FM1 socket motherboard. The way I can keep the memory speeds the same and with similar memory controllers to minimize the number of variables affecting performance.
The GIGABYTe 990FXA-UD5 maintains better throughput in every test except for Random 4K Reads. The biggest improvement is in Sequential Write performance.
Now lets take a look at performance for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. The USB 2.0 will be limited by the connection while USB 3.0 should only be limited by the device I use. If all is well, the USB 3.0 results should be very similar to the SATA test results.
The UD5 maintains its marginal leads as in most tests here. There is a huge improvements in sequential reads and writes. In the second chart though the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 falls behind in both 4K random read tests. This is consistent with the SATA results. While it has a solid performance overall when compared to its FM1 socket cousin, the UD5 I/O seems to struggle with random reads which could be driver related or something else which we may look into.
Next, let’s see how the graphics performance measures out on this board then take it home with our final thoughts!
Synthetic Graphical Performance (3DMark11)
3DMark11 is designed to provide a quick reference to the potential a system has for gaming. Using the Performance and Entry Level presets, I put the 1100T and FX-8150 systems through their paces.
It is very clear the improved I/O, memory controller, and better multi-threaded performance puts the 990FXA-UD5 + FX-8150 well above the 890FXA-UD5 + 1100T. Even when overclocked there just isn’t much competition to speak of here.
Real World Graphical Performance (AvP, Resident Evil 5, and Metro 2033)
As usual we will not move on to real world testing to validate 3DMark11 results. In these three games I used 1920 x 1080 resolution and max settings when given a choice.
Overall performance here is the same for both the 1100T and the FX-8150. The motherboards don’t seem to provide any realistic difference in performance at stock settings. The overclocking on the 990FXA-UD5 shows there is more performance to be squeezed out of the test system. Considering it was a CPU overclock via multiplier and the 1100T performance going down when overclocked, I believe the difference here is the memory throughput.
Audio Performance (RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3)
These test are straight forward self diagnostic style testing. Using the on-board audio to produce a test sound wave, a loop back cable is connected from the speaker out to the mic jack. I tested the system at 24-bit 48 kHz sound quality. I attempted to use the line-in jack as it would remove distortion created by the mic, but the Line-in does not support audio higher than 16-bit 44.1 kHz.
The audio system for the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 is pretty standard fair. The approach, as far as I can tell from the results, was to limit noise creation with a high quality sound output. While there is little post noise reduction or control it is not a problem as there is very little noise created in the first place. While the approach is solid, I would like to see more attention in crosstalk to avoid muddy audio.
Final Thoughts
GIGABYTE seems to have their eyes set on ensuring the quality of their products over anything else. I can tell a lot of time was put into design this board and building the BIOS for any user to enjoy their experience with it. This is clear from the inclusion of several profiles to save settings to and a robust failsafe system. I can’t think of a single moment using the 990FXA-UD5 when I was frustrated with the motherboard.
The look of the board is simple, black, with no space wasted or gaudy distracting pieces. I love this as matching the boards style and color to the rest of your system should be a breeze. As they say, black goes with everything and GIGABYTE’s new color is starting to grow on us.
As for features, GIGABYTE seems to have included every single feature they currently have available on this board from the downloadable TouchBIOS update to AutoGreen mode. I don’t expect anyone to use every feature, but I am sure everyone will find something to make their experience a pleasant one. Since it was very hard to complain about anything here, the only real down side is the average audio quality and limited options for the PCIe x1 slot. But really, we’re grasping at straws here.
The GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5 may not be the most cost effective, feature rich, or unique board on the market, but it sets the standard to measure all AMD 990FX boards against. Something we plan to do with offerings from the other players in the coming weeks. If you pony up the $179 US to buy this board for a new build today though, you certainly won’t be disappointed. If you’re coming from a 790FX or 890FX, you’ll get the latest features and the ability to go to the latest CPUs.
Pros
- Overclocking is Painless and Easy
- Built-in Failsafe Prevents Damage caused by OC
- Clean stylish Color Scheme
- Features for Everyone
- Plenty of Connectivity
Cons
- Only 4 SATA Cables in box for 6 ports
- PCIe x1 slot Only for 1/4 length cards due to heatsink obstruction
- Average Audio Quality
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10.0
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