CPU Performance Results

We spent a couple of weeks with the ECS A990FXM-A before beginning our performance testing, running various configurations and CPUs, and checking hardware compatibility. We verified our power consumption numbers using various different power supplies, and played a few hours of games with some members of the TPU community to get an overall feel for the board and to verify stability. Once completed, we tore down the system, mounted our Noctua cooler and put the board through the paces. We noticed no compatibility issues, however, we must say that the performance results that follow are not completely indicative of the ECS A990FXM-A's performance, as Phenom II technology, at this point, is fairly dated. At the same time, we have removed all Intel results in order to level out the playing field. With that said, on to the results!

SuperPi

SuperPI serves as our memory-focused benchmark, being highly single-threaded. The A990FXM-A ended up on the bottom of the pile of AM3+ products we have tested, well over a hundred seconds slower than our best result.

wPrime

wPrime is much more CPU-focused, but memory plays its role as well. In this test, the numbers were much closer, and the A990FXM-A was within what we expect from the Phenom II 1100T.

WinRAR

Part of our motherboard benchmarking suite is the built-in benchmark that is part of the WinRAR software suite. In this test, the ECS A990FXM-A put up good numbers, however, memory performance of the Phenom II does hold the A990FXM-A back a fair bit, but here, the A990FXM-A surpassed the M5A97 EVO, and the Biostar TA990FXE.

AIDA64

We employed AIDA64's memory bench to highlight memory bandwidth. We isolate the write performance metric as it serves as a good indicator of overall memory performance. Again the A990FXM-A ended up near the bottom of the pile.

HandBrake Encoding

Handbrake is used for encoding testing, and provided results much different when compared to the previous benchmarks, with the ECS A990FXM-A sitting a fair distance ahead, beating the ASUS M5A99X EVO by one FPS.

CineBench Encoding

In Cinebench, the ECS A990FXM-A was again a bit low, and there seems to be a trend emerging where the focus seems more centered on 3D and CPU performance rather than memory performance. We see the CPU side of things quite high, and perhaps if the memory performance was on par with the other products, the ECS A990FXM-A could have been on top 100%.