ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Preview

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The ASUS Crosshair IV Formula is a mobo in the Republic of Gamers lineup based on AMD's 890FX chipset, with Native SATA3 support and 32 PCIe lanes. The retail version will probably be in between US $200 and $220, it's going to be available around the time six core Phenom II X6 processors will be launched.




With the black and red colour scheme the Crosshair IV looks great. CPU coolers won't be hinderd by the board's heatsinks, if this unique design helps with actual cooling the VRM and other components remains to be seen.




On the rearpanel there are buttons for RoG Connect(monitoring and real-time overclocking through a secondary computer or laptop connected via USB), a CMOS clear switch and blue USB 3.0 connectors.




Four 16x PCI-E slots will be abled to work in 8x 8x 8x 8x mode with 4 graphics cards using CrossfireX.

On the PCB there's also an auto overclock switch and a 'core unlock' button for automatically unlocking x2 or x3 CPUs.

This is probly the most feature rich AMD motherboards up till now and a much cheaper solution than high-end Intel mainboards.



Read the full preview

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Atom N470

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Intel announced a new member of its Pineview generation being the N470, a processor that has the same specs as the N450 but has a higher clock speed of 1.833 GHz instead of 1.67 GHz.




The Thermal Design Power was raised from 5.5 Watts to 6.5 Watts, quite an increase that will probaly have an impact on the battery-life. Atoms are not Dual-Core, but instead have HyperThreading capability that simulates 2 logical cores. The Atom cache size is only 512 KB and the supported memory is DDR2.




New Atoms are also to be announced in the Pine Trail processor lineup, being the N455 and N475, if these CPUs will support DDR3 memory remains to be seen.




Atom N470 Specifications

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Gigabyte launches the GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 motherboard with SATA3 and USB3 support.

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The GA-890GPA-UD3H is a mainboard that comes with the '333' logo for SATA3, USB3 and 3x the power supply for USB devices.




There is CPU Support for 140w TDP processors, which means the upcoming six core Phenom II X6 CPUs will be supported.

The 890GPA-UD3H is equipped with a 4+1 phase Voltage Regulator Module, overclocking will probably be a bit less than the 'high-end' AM3 boards like the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P that has an 8+2 phase (Split Power Plane) VRM.




The South Bridge SB850 has a native SATA3 storage interface with superfast 6Gbps link speed (SATA3) and has six! connectors.

The USB3 has no native support, but is done by the NEC D720200F1 chip and you'll find the 2 connectors on the back panel.


The 890GX with Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics (DirectX10.1) has not been tested yet, but probably it will not differ that much from the HD 3300 (790G chipset) that is also clocked @700MHz, the HD4200 (785G chipset) was clocked @500MHz. According to Gigabyte you will be able to easy overclock the HD4290 up to 1150MHz for a 3DMark06 score of 3300 3Dmarks or above, we are a bit sceptical about this though.

There is even a 'legacy' floppy disk drive connector.




Most important Specs:

CPU Socket ANM3 -- support for 140w TDP CPUs.
Chipset AMD 890GX/SB850
DDR3 up to 1866MHz (OCed)
PCIe2.0 x16 - 2 slots (x16 or x8, x8) with (hybrid) CrossFireX™ support.
SATA 3Gb/s 2 connectors
SATA 6Gb/s 6 connectors
SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5/JBOD
Onboard Video
IGP ATI Radeon HD 4290
Onboard Audio includes optical out
Video Ports VGa, DVI, HDMI -- (No DisplayPort)




Gigabyte News

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Mainboard Review Round-Up

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1. GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P




bjorn3d.com compared the GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P with the GIGABYTE P55-UD4 and ASUS Maximus 3 Gene.
They were unable to test the SATA III capabilities of this mainboard because they could not get hold of a SATA III device.





2. Asus P6TD Deluxe
   
   bit-tech.net had a core i7 overclocing test and tried to reach the 4GHz barrier, but their sweetspot was the 3.8GHz mark, not a bad result.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Intel DH55TC
   
   
   
   motherboards.org tested a Core i5 661 CPU, but in the process they also had a look at the the Intel DH55TC, also have a look here for more reviews.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Asus Maximus III Formula
   
   
   xbitlabs.com tested the most complex P55 mobo the Asus Maximus III Formula, in their February 17, 2010 updated version they discovered one very annoying issue: after each power down the board assumed that there was a new processor installed more..
   
   
   
   
   

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EVGA P55 FTW reviewed and overclocked

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The EVGA P55 FTW is made for hardcore enthusiast, 12 Phase PWM will guarantee that the board will not be the limiting factor in case of overclocking, the CPU power supply is something special it has a 2x8pin connectors for 600 watts!!



Long-life capacitors in the VRM and the unique Triple BIOS support are some of the extras this mainboard has.

Power consumption:

min: 93 Watts max: 174 Watts




Overclocking:

With a voltmeter you can read the voltage levels when connected to EZ Voltages read points, there are several dedicated read points

EVGA has windows software that is called the E-LEET tuning utility and next to that there's the EVbot, a handheld unit to connect to the BIOS that allows overclocking from within windows.
The EVbot is able to read the onboard temperatures, the voltages as well as the frequencies can be altered in real-time.


pcper reached 4.12GHz (206x20) with a core i7-860, the vCore was set to 1.352 volts.

hitechlegion reached 4239.4MHz with an Intel Core i5 750, the vCore was set to 1.45 volts.

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Asrock A330ION motherboard reviewed

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This review is originally in French. (Google Translation)



The Asrock A330ION was compared to the Intel N330, Gigabyte N270, Via NANO, Intel GM45 with E2160 and the ASRock Nettop ION330.




The benchmarks that were tested are PCmark 2005, 3Dmark05/06, WinRAR and Street Fighter 4.



The A330ION can be overclocked as well, the CPU-Z result for the atom 330(stock speed 1.6GHz) was 2004MHz (12x167), more than 20% !




In the WinRAR bench it proved to be better than its competitors the ASRock A330 with 112 seconds was ahead of the Intel N330 with 139 seconds,the gigabyte N270 with 170 seconds and even ahead of the ASRock Nettop ION330 that comressed the files in 114 seconds, this is because the the Nettop has DDR2-800 memory while the Asrock A330ION has DDR3-1066 memory.

In the Windows Experience Index it had a score of 4.0 which can be considered quite good.




PROS:
Layout, overclocking, power consumption and performance.

CONS:
Noisy fan, Price.

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ECS H55H-M Linux Review

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First Linux tests of the ECS H55H-M and Core i3 530.




Actually phoronix made two tests, one about the ECS H55H-M dealing with the BIOS, board and test setup, the other is about the core i3 530.




This board not compared to another board, instead the core i3 530 is compared to the Core 2 Duo E8400 and the Phenom II X3 710 in the benchmarks, and it runs fine with Linux distributions employing a recent Linux kernel.




7zip benchmark results with the Core i3 "Clarkdale" show 7127 MIPS, the Core 2 Duo E8400 reached 4949 MIPS, while the Phenom II X3 710 ended up with 4213 MIPS.

This motherboard has no DisplayPort or HDMI, which can be considered a disadvantage, besides that the expansion capabilities are few.

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