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Published in Reviews

Home-brewed AMD Spider tested

by on01 February 2008

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Review: Phenom, 790X and HD3850

 

A local computer store has been kind enough to send us a couple of interesting components, found in official specs of AMD's Spider platform. These are any motherboard based on 790X/FX chipset, ATI Radeon 38x0 series graphics card and any AMD Phenom processor.

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Testbed:

Motherboard: MSI K9A2 CF, price 197KM (supplied by INGEL)
Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 QuadCore, price 432KM  (supplied by INGEL)
CPU Cooler: AC Freezer 64, price 42KM  (supplied by INGEL)
Graphics Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3850 512MB GDDR3, price 403KM (supplied by INGEL)
HDD: Hitachi 320GB sataII, price 151KM (supplied by INGEL)
RAM: Kingston 2x 1GB 800MHz 5-5-5-18  2x52 (supplied by INGEL)
PSU: Fortron Epsilon 700W, price 221KM  (supplied by INGEL)
DVD RW: NEC 7170S, price 55KM   (supplied by INGEL)
Monitor: FujitsuSiemens 21“ CRT

(2KM = 1€, tax included)




MSI K9A2 CF motherboard

Package contents
Motherboard
Win XP / Vista driver DVD
1x SATA cable
1x IDE cable
1x power cable molex/SATA
User's manual

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Features:
AMD Phenom/Athlon/Sempron processors based on AM2 or AM2+ socket
North Bridge AMD 790X
South Bridge AMD SB600
4x DDR2 533/667/800/1066MHz (1066MHz support only with AM2+ processors)
Realtek TRL80111B Gigabit network controller
Realtek ALC888 HD 7.1 Audio codec
4x SATA 3Gbps ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0 + 1
2x PCIE x16 2.0 slots supporting AMD Crossfire technology
1x PCIE x1
2x PCI slots


Motherboard Layout:

You will notice immediately that on the K9A2 motherboard it looks quite unpopulated. However, that means that you'll have enough space to fit just about anything. MSI did a good job by placing all the pin and power connectors on the edges of the board. SATA connectors are placed so as to not get in the way of PCIe x16 slots, just in case you decide to use a big-PCB graphics card. IDE connector is at 90 degrees to the motherboard, and it makes plugging in IDE devices much easier. Motherboard has 4-phase VRM and there are no add-ons for memory or NB. 12V of power for the CPU is 4-pin, whereas up until now it’s been 8-pin.

PCIe X160 ports are identical, but painted in different colors and routed directly through NB. The board also features a single PCIe x1 just above the second PCIe x16 slot, and two PCI slots directly underneath. The layout has been designed to provide ample space, except for the first PCI. In case you decide to use a dual-slot graphics card, you’ll be left without the first PCI slot, that’s placed just under the second PCIe x16.

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NB and SB cooling has been solved by using simple cooling solutions, but since AMD 790X and SB600 don’t generate much heat, this will be plenty. MSI equipped this board with Realtek’s ALC888 sound chip, and it will provide better sound performance, but still isn’t enough for Dolby and DTS. Since this is a budget solution, it’s gone only one Gigabit network controller based on Realteks TRL80111B.

The back of the board also seems unpopulated and it features 4x USB connectors, 2x PS/2, 1x RS232 port and 6x 3.5-mm sound card connectors.

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3850 512MB


The graphics card we received with this rig is Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3850. ATI Radeon HD 38x0 are based on 55-nm RV670 graphics chip with 320 Stream processors, they’re still using a 256-bit memory interface. Our test sample had 512MB of GDDR3 graphics memory.

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The graphics core runs at 668MHz, while memory runs at 1656MHz. Radeon HD 38x0 series supports DirectX 10.1, as well as Shader Model 4.1. The cooling solution is the active reference one, and the cooler covers most of the graphics card’s PCB, as well as the memory modules.

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Those who like overclocking, beware - although this cooler does its job well, it is somewhat noisy. The card’s PCB is a bit longer than our test rig’s motherboard’s PCB. Still, as we’ve mentioned before, MSI did a great job with the layout, so the size of our graphics card didn’t present a problem.

Package Contents

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Graphics card
Installation DVD
1x CrossFire bridge
1x VGA-to-DVI dongle
1x DVI-to-HDMI dongle
1x SATA power connector-to-6pin
1x S-video-to-RGB

AMD Phenom 9500 QuadCore

Our testing processor has four cores running at 2200MHz. Phenom has 2MB of L3 Cache, but we received the DR-B2 revision that’s not too overclocking-friendly, but we’ll do our best to squeeze out a couple of more MHz.

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We prepared our testing rig, installed Windows as well as latest Windows updates. We used the original version that came on the DVD’s. For our testing we used: Cinebench R10, 3Dmarks, FarCry, Crysis v1.1, LameMT, SiSoft Sandra lite XII, SuperPi, Gordian Knot, Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R. and World in Conflict.

LameMT

For our MP3 testing we opted for popular encoder LameMT, although we usually don't advise MP3 encoding because AC3 is better.

We used the internal play/CPU ratio, which means CPU is encoding content X times faster than the actual length of audio content. Memory speed is not that important for this test. We'll also give you single-thread bench results you might get with different versions of this encoder, because only LameMT can perform in more than one thread and utilize the second core.

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We used the following settings: lamemt --vbr-new -q 2 -V 2 -m j --strictly-enforce-ISO --resample 48

MultiThread result was 27,503, while single thread scores 17,978.



FarCry Crysis

Although we had a powerful graphics card, this rig scored playable FPS only at lower resolutions with AA off, but it’s important to note that the rest of the settings were set to maximum.

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F.E.A.R.

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This rig is more than enough for F.E.A.R. All resolutions with maximum antialiasing and anisotropic filtering scored playable FPS.


Company of Heroes

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Just as in F.E.A.R., in Company of Heroes our test rig scored playable FPS at highest resolutions with AA and AF on.



World in Conflict

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This is where this rig started to show weak points. At 1024x760 with no AA or AF, we scored playable FPS. Even at 1600x1200 the result was good. However, as soon as we turned on AA and AF, the tides turned. At 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with AA and AF on, our test rig failed to deliver playable FPS.



Super PI

We put our test-rig trough Super Pi test with 1M and 8M calculations, and the results were as follows:

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Gordian Knot /XVID 1.1.3

For our Gordian Knot testing we took a PAL episode from "Babylon 5" with a length of 41 minutes, 57 seconds and 8 frames.

We tried to "emulate" the most common usage of Gordian Knot:

1st: We have a perfect master, so we only de-interlace the content and resize it without any other manipulations; we marked this as "fast."

2nd: You get bad mastering on many DVDs, especially "old" stuff or when the studios are in a hurry for the release. In this case you want to improve the picture quality, which is done by filtering the content. You can choose from lots of filters for any purposes you can think of, but we only used the most common "undot," "FluxSmooth" and "MSharpen." Of course, we also de-interlaced, filters were done before any resizing took place (which is slower). We marked this as "slow."

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Conclusion

Although this rig didn’t meet our expectations in certain tests, we think it’s due to the fact that this is the first revision of this particular processor.

Overclocking this Phenom wasn’t particularly successful. We couldn’t push the sample we had over 2350MHz, which is only 150MHz more than reference speed. Still, in the IT world, first attempts are usually buggy and don’t mean much.

For our testing, we used Kingston ValueRAM memory running at 800MHz with 5-5-5-18 latencies, but we think that you could boost this rig’s performance by using faster memory modules. The graphics card in this rig has proven that it has what it takes to meet the demands of more demanding users.

Considering the availability of this hardware and its prices in the Balkans, we think that Ingel’s Gamer XXL rig is a good call. MSI K9A2 is a budget motherboard that proved it works well with Phenoms, and those who want more can simply opt for a more powerful chipset, such as AMD 790FZ. Considering the price of components in Ingel’s Gamer XXL, we think that price/performance ratio is more than good. You can read more on the prices and components on their website - www.ingel.ba


Last modified on 01 February 2008
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