ECS A890GXM-A AM3 Black Series motherboard review

Synthetic Tests

CrystalDiskMark

Crystal DiskMark version 2.2 is an excellent way to test your motherboard/HD’s performance. CrystalDiskMark is primarily a HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to measure sequential and random read/write speeds.

Here are two key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

· Sequential reads/writes

· Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes

First we test with our older 790X chipset and we see decent performance.

Next up is our ECS A890GXM-A motherboard and we note all the performance figures are solidly up over the older motherboard.

CustomPC Benchmark

CustomPC benchmark use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests themselves are not synthetic benchmarks but instead they use real world image, video and multi-tasking tasks to test the performance of your computer.

The tests are:

• GIMP Image Editing
• H.264 Video Encoding
• Multi-tasking

As usual we test with the Gigabyte GA-MA790X, our older chipset first.

Now let’s look at this same bench also running a HD 4870 on our ECS A890GXM-A motherboard. We notice these tests will translate to doing video, image and multi-tasking tasks significantly faster on the newer motherboard.

Now lets look at the ECS A890GXM-A motherboard using the integrated graphics. We see the integrated HD 4890 does a fine job of image and video editing as well as multi-tasking compared to our same system with the HD 4870 installed and it is still faster than with our older 790X motherboard. You will not need a discrete video card to do photo editing, video transcoding or multi-tasking.

Everest

Everest is a complete benchmarking/stress test for your PC.

Just a part of Everest Benchmark will measure the raw performance of:

• Transfer Rate
• Access Time
• CPU Usage
• Burst Rate
• Random Access test
• Write benchmark
• Hard Disk information which includes partition information, supported features, firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
• Hard Disk Health
• S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
• Power On Time
• Error scan and Temperature display

However, the most important difference in motherboards that Everest will measure is with the Cache & Memory Benchmark. First we look at our 790X older motherboard.
Now we look at the ECS A890GXM-A memory and cache performance. The RAM runs at a different speed and timing in each motherboard since the older board uses DDR2 and the ECS A890GXM-A uses DDR3.
We can generally see big improvements in the Everest benches of the new chipset over the old. Of course, we cannot compare performance exactly as the DDR3 runs at a much faster speed than DDR2. We wonder if the newer chipset and motherboard will improve hard drive performance. Read on.

HD Tune 3.50

HD Tune is a hard disk utility. We are using the default setting of 64KB blocks for testing

First we run the standard benchmark of our older 790X Gigabyte motherboard with the HD 4870:

Now we run the same standard benchmark with the HD 4870 and our new ECS A890GXM-A.

Finally we test the new 890GXM motherboard with its integrated graphics on the standard benchmark.

As you can see there is little to no difference with the HD 4870 installed or with integrated graphics, so we will continue to show you only the benches with our HD 4870 installed in both motherboards for brevity as this trend is repeated all throughout the benchmarks. Of course, it should be this way as graphics subsystems should not affect HD performance.

In fact, we see very little performance improvement in the new motherboard over the older one except with faster minimums and also in the burst rate.

Now let’s look at the HD Tune’s file benchmark of our older 790X motherboard with the HD 4870 installed.

And now the file benchmark with HD 4870 and A890GXM-A

We can see that with a regular hard drive, there is very little difference.

Now the Extra benchmark with the HD 4870 and our older Gigabyte mother board with chipset 790X.

Now the Extra benchmark with the HD 4870 and A890GXM-A show that the transfer rates have improved.

We can see advantages to using the newer chipset for a regular hard drive that would surely be magnified by using a SSD.

Hyper-Pi (Super Pi)

Hyper-Pi is a program that is often used by overclockers to test the stability of their computer. From Wikipedia:

Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point – up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute Pi to 232 digits.

First, here is the standard benchmark of Hyper-Pi with our Gigabyte 790X motherboard with our HD 4870 installed:

Now we run Hyper Pi with the HD 4870 and our A890GXM-A motherboard:

It doesn’t really prove anything, but calculating Pi is a bit faster with our newer motherboard.

PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista that offers one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PCMark Vantage score is a rough measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security tasks.

First we run the standard PCMark Vantage benchmark suite using our older Gigabyte 790X motherboard with the HD 4870 installed

Now we run the same benchmark suite with HD 4870 and our ECS A890GXM-A.

And now let’s compare by using our ECS motherboard with the integrated graphics only.

In all cases, the newer motherboard is faster with PCMark Vantage.

SANDRA 2010 SP1

SANDRA, short for the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant is an information and diagnostic utility. It provides a tremendous amount of information about every hardware and software component in your PC. It also provides various benchmarks. First we run the arithmetic benchmark of our Gigabyte 790X motherboard with the HD 4870:

Now we test with the HD 4870 and our ECS A890GXM-A motherboard and notice the very slightest decrease in Drystone ALU and the Aggregate Arithmetic Performance.

Let’s check out the memory bandwidth benchmark of A890GXM-A with HD 4870.

Finally the multi-media benchmark with our HD 4870 and A890GXM-A:

We have already seen improvements in video editing and multi-tasking, but will it also translate to improved performance in gaming? We will look at it now that we are finished with the synthetic benchmarks.

«1. Introduction2. Packing & Contents3. Test Configuration4. Synthetic Tests5. Gaming and IG performance6. BIOS updates & eJiffy7. Overclocking8. Conclusion9. View All»