ECS A890GXM-A AM3 Black Series motherboard review

Gaming & IG Performance

Vantage

Without a doubt, Vantage is a synthetic test. However, it fits in well with gaming as it also benches two mini-games and gives their comparative framerates. Vantage is Futuremark’s latest test. It is really useful for tracking changes in a single system – especially driver changes. There are two mini-game tests, Jane Nash and Calico and also two CPU tests, but we are still focusing on the graphics performance. Here is a scene from Vantage’s second mini-game.

Let’s go right to the graphs and first check the basic tests with the default benchmark scores with our HD 4870 in our older Gigabyte 790X motherboard.

We notice that the overall score is a bit higher with the older motherboard because of the GPU score; the CPU score is higher with the newer motherboard.

Things are pretty sad when we try to run the stock tests with HD 4290 integrated graphics.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is an air combat video game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was released in United States on March 6, 2009. You have the opportunity to fly 54 aircraft over real world locations and cities in somewhat realistic environments that are created with satellite data. This game is a more of a take on flying than a real simulation and it has received mixed reviews.

The game story takes place during the time of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. H.A.W.X. is set in the year 2014 where private military companies have replaced government-run military in many countries. The player is placed into the cockpit as an elite ex-military pilot who is recruited by one of these corporations to work for them as a mercenary. You later return to the US Air Force with a team as you try to prevent a full scale terrorist attack on the United States which was started by your former employer.

Let’s check out H.A.W.X. at 1920×1200:

Let’s look now at ‘medium’ details and 1440×900 and add our 890GX IG into the mix:

We see a very slight edge go to the HD 4870 in our newer motherboard but we would not think of using the integrated graphics to play this game except at much lower details and resolution than we used.

DiRT 2 Demo – (DX9c)

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is a racing game that was released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. It includes many new race-events, including stadium events as your RV travels from one event to another in many real-world environments across four continents. Dirt 2 includes five different event types even allowing you to compete at new locations. It also includes a new multiplayer mode. Dirt 2 is powered by an updated version of the EGO engine which was featured in Race Driver: Grid. This updated EGO engine also features an updated physics engine.

First we test our two motherboards with the HD 4870 at 1920×1200:

Now we test at at 1440×900 (not 1449×990) and with “medium” details but still we like to use 4xAA/16xAF. We note the relatively poor showing with the integrated HD 4290 graphics.

Again we see the newer chipset solidly beat the older one and this is unusual. The faster memory and sub-systems should not account for such a large difference. Again, the integrated graphics are not suited for 1440×900 but would meet the game’s minimum requirements at a lower resolution and detail setting.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat

S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat became a brand new DX11 benchmark for us after GSC Game World released a another story expansion to the original Shadows of Chernobyl. It is the third game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. All of these games have non-linear storylines which feature role-playing game elements. In both games, the player assumes the identity of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.; an illegal artifact scavenger in “The Zone” which encompasses about 30 square kilometers. It is the location of an alternate reality story surrounding the Chernobyl Power Plant after another (fictitious) explosion.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat features “a living breathing world” with highly developed NPC creature AI. Call of Pripyat utilizes the XRAY 1.6 Engine, allowing advanced modern graphical features through the use of DirectX 11 to be fully intregrated. Call of Pripyat is also compatible with DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 10.1. It uses the X-ray 1.6 Engine one outstanding feature being the inclusion of real-time GPU tessellation– a Shader model 3.0 & 4.0 graphics engine featuring HDR, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, weather effects and day-to-night cycles.

As with other engines using deferred shading, the original DX9c X-ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled, although the DX10 and DX 11 versions do. We are using the stand-alone “official” benchmark by Clear Sky’s creators. Call of Pripyat is top-notch and worthy to be part of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R’s universe with even more awesome DX11 effects which help to create and enhance their game’s already incredible atmosphere. As with Clear Sky before it, DX10 and now DX11 comes with steep hardware requirements and this new game still really needs multi-GPU to run at its maximum settings.

We present our settings for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat benchmark at 1920×1200 resolution:

First the results at 1920×1200 with the HD 4870 and our older 790x motherboard:

Now at 1920×1200 with 4870/790x we see very little difference.

So let’s look at our setup for 1440×900:

Now we see the results of our HD 4870 in our older motherboard:

So now let’s look at our ECS A890GXM-A and the HD 4870 at 1440×900; notice a subtle performance increase over the older motherboard when the emphasis is shifted away from the video card.

Finally, let’s see if the integrated graphics can handle Call of Pripyat at just 1440×900 and medium details:
It’s not really playable with the HD 4290 IG. You would really have to drop the details or the resolution – or both. However, when we use our HD 4870, we see almost no difference at 1920×1200 but we do see some improvement with the newer motherboard at 1440×900.  This is logical as at higher resolutions we can expect more work to be shifted to the graphics card.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is a survival horror third-person shooter developed and published by Capcom that has become the best selling single title in the series. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil series and it was released for Windows in September 2009. Resident Evil 5 revolves around two investigators pulled into a bio-terrorist threat in a fictional town in Africa.

Resident Evil 5 features online co-op play over the internet and also takes advantage of NVIDIA’s new GeForce 3D Vision technology. The PC version comes with exclusive content the consoles do not have. The developer’s emphasis is in optimizing high frame rates but they have implemented HDR, tone mapping, depth of field and motion blur into the game. Re5‘s custom game engine, ‘MT Framework’, already supports DX10 to benefit from less memory usage and faster loading.

Resident Evil 5 gives you choice as to DX10 or DX9 and we naturally ran the DX10 pathway.
There are two benchmarks built-into Resident Evil 5. We chose the fixed benchmark. Here it is first at 1920×1200 with our HD 4870 and the older 790x motherboard:

Now let’s compare our ECS A890GXM-A with HD 4870 at 1440×900 and also see where the integrated HD 4290 stands:

Again, the integrated HD 4290 is simply not made for DX10 games at this high of a resolution or detail setting. The HD 4870 in the newer motherboard is slightly faster than in the older motherboard at 1920×1200 but pulls further ahead at our lower resolution and detail setting.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3:Terran Conflict (X3:TC) is another beautiful stand-alone benchmark that runs multiple tests and will really strain a lot of video cards. X3:TC is a space trading and combat simulator from Egosoft and is the most recent of their X-series of computer games. X3:TC is a standalone expansion of X3: Reunion, based in the same universe and on the same engine. It complements the story of previous games in the X-Universe and especially continues the events after the end of X3: Reunion.
Compared to Reunion, Terran Conflict features a larger universe, more ships, and of course, new missions. The X-Universe is huge. The Terran faction was added with their own set of technology including powerful ships and stations. Many new weapons systems were developed for the expansion and it has generally received good reviews. It has a rather steep learning curve.

Here is our setup for 1920×1200 resolution:

Here is our HD 4870/780X motherboard combo at 1920×1200 results.

And now our HD 4870/A890GXM-A results at 1920×1200 are slightly stronger.

Now checkout our setup for our HD 4290 as the integrated graphics just cannot handle a high resolution; we still like to apply antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, however:

So here are the HD 4290 1440×900 resolution results with medium details:

It’s not playable at our settings. You would want to disable filtering and/or drop the resolution. Ideally if you are a PC gamer, you would want a discreet video card, but this will do in a pinch for the occasional gamer.

CRYSIS

Next we move on to Crysis, a science fiction first person shooter by Crytek. It remains one of the most demanding games for any PC and it is also still one of the most beautiful games released to date. Crysis is based in a fictional near-future where an alien spacecraft is discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, ‘Nomad’ who is armed with futuristic weapons and equipment.

Crysis uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering. A standalone but related game, Crysis Warhead was released last year. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power Crysis and Warhead and it is an extended version of the CryEngine that also powers FarCry. As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0, and DirectX10’s 4.0, CryEngine2 is also multi-threaded to take advantage of dual core SMP-aware systems and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics. However, it is noted that actually playing this game is a bit slower than the demo implies.

GPU Demo, Island

First the results at 1920×1200 show the HD 4870 in the newer motherboard is ever so slightly ahead of the older one. Here our settings are set to the maximum “very high” including 4xAA and we force 16xAF in the control panel. Here is Crysis’ Island Demo benchmark, first at 1920×1200 resolution:

Now at 1440×900 resolution and medium details we see the HD 4870 in the newer motherboard pull ahead.

We see the very slightest performance increase with DDR3 and the new motherboard at 1920×1200 but a much more noticeable one at lower resolution and details. We will gladly take the performance increase of the new chipset but will eschew playing Crysis with the integrated graphics.

FarCry 2

Far Cry 2 uses the name of the original Far Cry but it is not connected to the first game as it brings you a new setting and a new story. Ubisoft created it based on their Dunia Engine. The game setting takes place in an unnamed African country, during an uprising between two rival warring factions. Your mission is to kill “The Jackal”; the Nietzsche-quoting mercenary that arms both sides of the conflict that you are dropped into.

The Far Cry 2 game world is loaded in the background and on the fly to create a completely seamless open world. The Dunia game engine provides good visuals that scale well. One thing to especially note is Far Cry 2’s very realistic fire propagation by their engine that is a far cry from the scripted fire and explosions that we are used to seeing.

Check out our HD 4870/780x motherboard settings for Far Cry 2 at 1440×900

Here are our results at 1440×900 with our HD 4870 in our older 790x motherboard:

And now we look at the same HD 4870 also at 1440×900 resolution but in the new ECS motherboard. We see a solid increase in the average framerate!

Finally we test our integrated HD 4290 at the same settings:

Ouch! Get a discreet video card if you want to play Far Cry 2 at any resolution or setting.

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