The 990FX Chipset Arrives: AMD And SLI Rise Again

[verbalizer]

I'm actually very pleased with this. I've been holding off buying new parts because I wanted to see how the industry would settle down and now I feel confident that I can go 990FX. I'll explain.

Currently my build is,
AMD Phenom II X4 940BE @3.5
Asus board based on NVidia 750a (can't remember board name)
DDR2-800 @ 8GB
NVidia GTX285 x 2 SLI
Highpoint RocketRaid HBA
4x 360GB SATA2 7200RPM disks in RAID 0

The CPU and the GPUs are both water cooled, the GPU's have special whole card blocks that reduce them to single slot GPUs, these blocks are $130+.

My upgrade plan was,
AMD CPU (either Phenom II x4 980BE or newer Bulldozer)
AMD Board (Nvidia's newest chipset isn't going to cut it)
16GB DDR3
Keep current GPU's
OCZ Revodrive X2 240GB

I'm happy to know their keeping the same socket which would entail my CPU waterblock being compatible with it. Also with SLI being available on a newer AMD platform the single biggest thing holding me back from upgrading is removed. Honestly don't really care how bulldozer performs, hopefully it has a nice overclock-able unlocked quad core, either way I'll go whats best for my money.

kind of right there with ya..

 

[jers]

I don't really understand how a more beefy card would have helped the tests.. I actually think that the limit of that SLI might have rendered visible any advantage of a platform over the other.. I would have been surprised if any of the two helped that SLI increase a few FPS over the "bottleneck". Not sure if that makes sense to you, just my impression

 

[falchard]

NOOOO, MSI What have you done?

This is your first AMD FX chipset that cannot fit 4 double-wide video cards.

 

[Why_Me]

NOOOO, MSI What have you done?

This is your first AMD FX chipset that cannot fit 4 double-wide video cards.

Yes and of course you know how many of us use 4 double wide vid cards...

 

[teodoreh]

No USB3.0 support? Really?

 

[haplo602]

hmm ... the last 3 games were very interesting. it seems something is not working right as there's basicaly no difference (not a significant one anyway) in the results.

this shows 2 things:

1. Phenom II can keep up with latest Intel in games.
2. Some games have a problem with non-Intel CPUs.

As to the 2nd point. Does the board support AMD-Vi ? If yes, run the last games in a VM with the GPU assigned to the VM. That should clear the CPU differences (cpu family will not be detectable by the game). Then we can see if it's a problem with the Phenom or an artificial one from Intel compiler and libraries used by the game makers.

Anyway looking at the numbers, I suddenly feel happy about my dual opteron setup Sure it is slower, but with a decent GPU it still has plenty of usability.

 

[haplo602]

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]Disappointing. I can clearly see the value of features like Virtu and SRT on the Z68 platform, but the 990FX doesn't offer anything comparable. Well, I've waited this long, another few weeks won't kill me to see if Fusion makes a difference......Except that July is the month I expect the parasites' efforts to destroy the value of the dollar will start coming to their fruition.[/citation]

Virtu is a crutch to enable people to actualy use QuickSync in every situation. There's nothing technicaly prohibitive to not implement Virtu on Llano/Fusion systems or any system.

SRT is an excuse for the lack of proper filesystems in Windows. ZFS does this natively if you like.

 

[haplo602]

[citation][nom]billj214[/nom]Maybe I missed something but does ATI cards suffer the same graphics performance issues running Xfire with games like BFBC2, F1 and JC2?[/citation]

why didn't I consider this. maybe the performance drop is just a driver/profile problem from Nvidia ?

 

[verbalizer]

nVidia drivers are better than AMD's..

 

[nebun]

we can see that the graphics cards are not the bottleneck here...it's the cpu....INTEL rules ...AMD is trying to catch up....wait they haven't even started running

 

[verbalizer]

^
I wouldn't say they haven't started to run, that's a bit much...
They are fighting hard to assure second place...

Actually AMD chips are really trying to supplant with Intel, it's just business and having a market for..
also competition.

 

[dgingeri]

The bad news is that those Bulldozer-based chips are still not ready. Processors based on the B0 stepping are in the hands of motherboard manufacturers. But they’re all telling me that performance is nowhere near what they were expecting, and it’ll take another stepping to fix them.

I don't like the sound of this. I hope this isn't a design problem and can be fixed with just a new stepping. There is the very real possibility that these new AMD chips don't measure up to Intel's current chips. If that happens, I fear it may be the end of AMD on the desktop. Oh, they'll still do well in server and netbook arenas, but I doubt they'd be able to keep it up on the desktop.

 

[pacioli]

What did this show me? Two non-equivalent CPUs/platforms perform differently... so... I already knew that a Phenom 2 can't outperform a Sandy Bridge processor. Show me a similiarly performing Bulldozer then we have an article. I wonder if this isn't just a way for AMD to announce that they have their AM3+ boards out and about.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]pacioli[/nom]What did this show me? Two non-equivalent CPUs/platforms perform differently... so... I already knew that a Phenom 2 can't outperform a Sandy Bridge processor. Show me a similiarly performing Bulldozer then we have an article. I wonder if this isn't just a way for AMD to announce that they have their AM3+ boards out and about.[/citation]

Soon as AMD decides they're ready, you can bet we'll do this story, add in CrossFire, and have an even more informative piece ;-)

 

[xx_pemdas_xx]

can't wait for bulldozer THANKS FOR THE REVIEW>

 

[clonazepam]

When they do a motherboard roundup article with this new chip, hopefully they'll throw in the best mobo w/ the past chip for comparison... Cangelini?

 

[ilysaml]

we should wait for the Bulldozer and see benchmarks!

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Sooooo, test the 890FX against the 990FX? Out of curiosity, did you see the passage where AMD told me point-blank that 990FX is the same exact silicon as 890FX? Much more interesting, in my opinion, is the fact that motherboard vendors are now licensing SLI for 990FX. If I already know I want a pair of 560 Tis or 570s, the real question is: should I put them on an AMD platform (x16/x16 links) or Intel (x8/x8)? The answer seems pretty clear: Intel until AMD launches Zambezi, and you can be sure I'll be revisiting the question once that happens!Thanks for the feedback,Chris[/citation]
Good article Chris. For the sake of prices and us consumers, I hope AMD brings more than hype to the table this time with the Zambezi release.

 

[-Fran-]

[citation][nom]iam2thecrowe[/nom]they just reviewed the board and gave you an sli comparison with another platform to make sure the SLI part is up to par, which it seems to be when not bottlenecked by the cpu. What more do you expect?[/citation]

It was a good review, yes. But it lacked in-depth comparison on a broader specter of video cards from nVidia and just proved something we already know: PhII is slower than Core i's.

I don't know if it was more like a "preview review", but if you're not gonna show something worthy of TH's, wait a lil' longer for the full blown review.

Mr. Angelini said it when referring to the "samples" he got from AMD, so why not doing the same with the 990FX SLI review? Or at least go in-depth...

Cheers!

 

[sonofliberty08]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Sooooo, test the 890FX against the 990FX? Out of curiosity, did you see the passage where AMD told me point-blank that 990FX is the same exact silicon as 890FX? Much more interesting, in my opinion, is the fact that motherboard vendors are now licensing SLI for 990FX. If I already know I want a pair of 560 Tis or 570s, the real question is: should I put them on an AMD platform (x16/x16 links) or Intel (x8/x8)? The answer seems pretty clear: Intel until AMD launches Zambezi, and you can be sure I'll be revisiting the question once that happens!Thanks for the feedback,Chris[/citation]
maybe u can just put it on the AM3 nforce 980 SLI mobo , test it with same processor again

 

[TeraMedia]

There were several games in this article for which the AMD platform seemed to bottleneck the frame rate at lower resolutions. I for one would have liked to have seen a bit of analysis into the cause of that bottleneck.

During some past game performance analyses (I think it was one of the SBMs), it was determined that either the memory bandwidth or the memory latency (I forget which) was causing lower frame rates, not the CPU performance or the GPU. So if this is the case here, then it's conceivable that using either quicker (tighter timings) or faster (higher frequency) RAM could improve performance on the AMD platform.

Factor in the difference in overclocking features between a SB 2400 and a similarly-priced Phenom II, and you have the makings of a decent follow-on article, I think. In other words, "if you don't OC, go SB. If you do OC, go SB above $x and AMD below."

 

[belardo]

AMD 900 series chipsets should be native USB3... come on... how about some Thunderbolt.

And yes... I'm still waiting for Bulldozer to replace my Intel C2Q... but I may still go Sandy Bridge.

 

[belardo]

So... what we maybe seeing, is artificial bottlenecking of the AMD PII platform by Nvidia in some way, either from BIOS or in the drivers. Run the same benchmarks running ATI/AMD Crossfire cards on both intel and AMD platforms.

Someone posted "It is perhaps in Nvidias interests to reduce performance for AMD Users". That would not be quite true. Sure, it may lead to some more INTEL buyers, but it would most likely drive AMD users to stick with AMD video cards.

In general, todays AMD PII CPUs are still somewhat competitive against the current SandyBridge CPUs - as long as the price is lower of course. Its not like comparing the crappy Pentium4s, running 3.6Ghz that played games slower than AMD 2.0Ghz CPUs that costs 1/3rd the price.

Yes, Bulldozer is needed out today, but its better to wait a month or two for more cooking than to have another Phenom1 debacle (a big hot chip than ran like crap). And the AMD ability of forward and backwards compatibility does have its usefulness and cost-effectiveness.

 

[computertech82]

Was thinking of going with sandy bridge, amd has NOTHING that comes even close. But then sandy bridge 2 comes out early 2012 with pcie 3.0 slots, native usb 3, etc. decisions, decisions.

 

[Guest]

I see, the only diference in graphics permormance is maked for the procesor the Core i5 2400 is 60% faster than the Phenom II x4 980BE... why no used Phenom II x6 1100T with Turbo Actived, be more equilibated.. Gflops VS Gflops