ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI Prepare 790 GX Motherboards with Sideport Memory Onboard

[btarunr]

ASUS, Gigabye and MSI, three leading consumer motherboard vendors have prepared motherboards with DDR3 Sideport memory onboard to minimise the potential bottlenecks the HD 3300 integrated graphics processor (IGP) faces with the memory, taking the IGP closer to what it's built to deliver. Each of these IGP's come with memory controllers like almost any discrete GPU, the IGP features a DDR3 (not to be confused with GDDR3) memory controller that accesses 128 MB of memory that's on the motherboard, this memory size is expanded by ATI Hypermemory technology.

These boards use DDR3 memory chips made by Qimonda and Elpida. Presenting, the ASUS M3A78-T, Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H and MSI K9A2GX-Digital:



Here's the center of it all: the AMD 790 GX northbridge that brings in level of graphics performance only achieved by discrete graphics, it is fully DirectX 10.1 compliant and with the added sideport memory has significant gains in performance. The 790 GX supports Hybrid Crossfire X, Crossfire of two ATI graphics accelerators at PCI-E 2.0 x8, x8 bandwidth, uses a revised A-Link connection to the southbridge. 790GX boards come with two kinds of southbridge chips, the inexpensive / cost-effective ones come with the SB 700 while the more upscale ones come with the SB 750. The SB 750 supports better overclocking thanks to its on-die clock-generator, supports RAID 5 with its 6 SATA II ports.



The sideport memory these boards will be using:



These boards support the latest 140W CPUs, are Crossfire X compatible and each manufacturer has put in its own set of novelty features for these boards.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[kenkickr]

The Asus and MSI boards look very nice compared to the Wonka looking Gigabyte but why do the Asus and MSI only have 5 or 4 SATA ports?!

 

[btarunr]

The Asus and MSI boards look very nice compared to the Wonka looking Gigabyte but why do the Asus and MSI only have 5 or 4 SATA ports?!

The 6th port is eSATA

 

[selway89]

Very interesting, dont like the look of the MSI with the stupid cooler.
ASUS however looks very nice and the board is chocolate colour lol

 

[btarunr]

Very interesting, dont like the look of the MSI with the stupid cooler.

Me too, it looks a toy fruit-basket. But the cavity you see probably would have housed a fan if required...maybe that's what went thru their minds.

 

[tkpenalty]

The ASUS board looks revolting, the Gigabyte has a non functional cooler (but looks the best...) while the MSI is the only board with a cooling solution that works properly.

 

[ShadowFold]

How is the ASUS revolting? Mine doesn't get hot at all.

 

[panchoman]

The ASUS board looks revolting, the Gigabyte has a non functional cooler (but looks the best...) while the MSI is the only board with a cooling solution that works properly.

i think the gigabyte and asus cooling beats the msi cooling.. while msi chooses to link the heatsinks from the northbridge and southbridge, they fail to cool the pwm area, whereas asus and gigabyte stress the importance of cooling the area and put a seperate low profile heatsink on the southbridge. also, i like how gigabyte shaped their northbridge hsf to give room to whatever monster of a card might be sitting in that x16 slot.

also, something i found interesting, in the 6th picture.. why the hell is the memory chip right next to the cpu socket and not near the igp/chipset?

also, it sadly seems like these 3 boards will be following dfi's latest startegy of skimping on a socketed bios chip... pray to god that your bios flash wont fail, otherwise you will be enjoying an overpriced doorstop.

 

[btarunr]

i think the gigabyte and asus cooling beats the msi cooling.. while msi chooses to link the heatsinks from the northbridge and southbridge, they fail to cool the pwm area

Nope:

 

[panchoman]

ah, i must've missed that fine detail in the bigger picture, thanks for clarifying.

 

[King Wookie]

I still can't decide if I like the colour of the Asus's mobo.

As for the cooling, the proof is in the pudding as they say.
Reviews will tell all.

 

[devguy]

Something I've been wondering for a long time is how big of a difference does the 8pin EPS12V make compared with the 4pin? I've always been told that when overclocking, not to even look at the 4pin ones. From what I can tell, only the Gigabyte and the FoxConn have the 8pin. In fact, the Gigabyte motherboard looks like an exact replica of my GA-MA790FX motherboard, but with two 8x pcie 2.0 lanes and a different southbridge (still keeps the awesome onboard audio; us digital users, look for no less than DTS: Connect!). Unfortunately it also inherited the stupid lack of right angle SATA ports (all motherboards should have at least two SATA ports right angled on the side IMHO).

 

[wolf2009]

I like the look of that GIGABYTE board the best. It has the best and most clean looking colours .

 

[choppy]

i jus had an idea frm this story, why cant mobo manufacturers integrate ram onto their mobo's? instead of us havin to buy separate

 

[ShadowFold]

i jus had an idea frm this story, why cant mobo manufacturers integrate ram onto their mobo's? instead of us havin to buy separate

Well that would ruin sales of normal ram and it would force us all to have the same amount of ram.

 

[H82LUZ73]

Why get the lower end boards ,There is a version with the 790FX chip set and for ASUS is the M3A79-T,It is the M3A32-MVP with the SB750 on it.That is the one you guys should be getting.

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=12238

 

[cdawall]

Nope:

they did the same thing on the 790FX board they missed 2 of the mosfets? wtf msi are those less important or something?

 

[btarunr]

To the AMD platform, 790 GX / 790 X and FX are somewhat like the P45 and X48 for Intel.

The 790X is so forgotten.

they did the same thing on the 790FX board they missed 2 of the mosfets? wtf msi are those less important or something?

Those two are part of the phase that the choke next to that 4-pin connector is part of. In most boards, I've seen such a phase. Looks like it's not very involved with CPU power (not much load to heat up for). ASUS often writes these as "4+1 phase" , "5+1 phase". My M3A is 4+1. Why the +1?

 

[cdawall]

Those two are part of the phase that the choke next to that 4-pin connector. In most boards, I've seen such a phase. Looks like it's not very involved with CPU power (not much load to heat up for). ASUS often writes these as "4+1 phase" , "5+1 phase". My M3A is 4+1. Why the +1?

ahh that makes sense...only thing is that looks alot like the cooler on my K9A2 and the cooler doesn't contact all the phases under it hopefully this will do better...

 

[choppy]

Well that would ruin sales of normal ram and it would force us all to have the same amount of ram.

it wouldnt ruin sales of ram, cos the mobo manufacturers would but directly from the ram vendors. Well we all have the same amount of ram anyway..or thereabouts. jus make different boards with different amount of memories, like they do gfx cards

 

[Polarman]

According to MSI site, their GX platinum board can only do x8/ x8 crossfire. That's bad.

I don't know about the others.

• 1 mazarine PCI Express x16 slot with x16 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)
• 1 light-blue PCI Express x16 slot with x8 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)
- When 2 PCI Express x16 slots are all installed, the PCIE x 16 lanes will auto arrange form x16/ x0 to x8/ x8. Do not use the light-blue slot when only one PCI Express x16 card is installed.

 

[btarunr]

Yes, the 790GX only does x8 x8.

 

[ShadowFold]

8x/8x 2.0 crossfire is just as good as 16x/16x 1.1 as proved by alot of review sites on the interwebs.

 

[btarunr]

PCI-E 2.0 x8 bottlenecks HD4850 significantly (http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html )

 

[H82LUZ73]

Guys hence why the LOW END boards.The FX chip is AMD`s top dog and these boards are just the 790X with Graphics hence GX .