New AMD Build

[tommyturnip]

The EVO has the SB850 Southbridge. Although I will admit that when I got it I didn't know the significance of the SB850...I just saw it had USB3 and 6 gb SATA.



Again, the EVO supports crossfire and hybrid crossfire (what the difference is I haven't checked). The number of lanes is the same but the 890 has a PCIx4 the 880 doesn't.



All in all I think the EVO is a little gem.

Cheers guys, I think the reason why I was struggling to find the difference between 880 and 890 is the fact that the SB850 is used in both, where I saw the SB710 I discounted the board. I am not so much fussed by Crossfire but I would like to get USB3 and SATA 6GB as these would be useful for future upgrades.

The USB3 omittion in the M4A89GTD PRO is puzzling but there is a M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 for around a tenner more, having 2 editions of the of the same board is annoying as it probably results in customers ending up accidently buying the lesser board.

[scaryjim]

Just a quick note on crossfire:

The 880 chipset doesn't officially support it: the northbridge only has 1 PCIe x16 controller and 6 PCIe x1 controllers, so where manufacturers include it on 880 boards they do it by running 4 PCIe x1 lanes to the second physical PCIe x16 slot - so it only runs at electrical x4, which will starve the second card of bandwidth. The 890G chipset - while it has the same number of PCIe lanes - has an extra controller (the x16 is split into 2 x8s, I think) and officially supports crossfire, so it can run 1 card at x16 or two cards at x8 each, which would give better crossfire performance. If you're never going to run crossfire though, that's not going to bother you either way .

Hybrid crossfire is where you pair up a low end discrete GPU (e.g. 3450 / 4350 / 5450) with the IGP in an 880G / 890GX motherboard to get a small (but significant) performance boost. However, hybrid crossfire with a 5450 is still going to be noticably slower than a 5670 or better graphics card. It's a nice concept, but in the real world it's not actually that much use

[Attila the Bun]

You are a regular mine of information SJ.

Just a quick note on crossfire:

The 880 chipset doesn't officially support it: the northbridge only has 1 PCIe x16 controller and 6 PCIe x1 controllers, so where manufacturers include it on 880 boards they do it by running 4 PCIe x1 lanes to the second physical PCIe x16 slot - so it only runs at electrical x4, which will starve the second card of bandwidth.

Now going on what you've just said above does that mean that ASUS have been a tad creative with the truth when they quote, and I've lifted this verbatim from their offical spec for the EVO...

"2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 , support ATI CrossfireX Technology (blue @ x16 mode, grey @ x4 mode)"

I can see from you have said that what ASUS are saying but really should this not read...

1 x PCIe 2.0 x 16
1 x PCIe 2.0 x 4

...to be accurate?

[scaryjim]

Yes, they're being accurate but not precise. The board has two *physical* PCIe x16 slots, so they're quite entitled to list "2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 , support ATI CrossfireX Technology" as a spec because it's technically true. You can fit 2 PCIe x16 expansion cards into the board, and if those two cards are the correct types of ATI graphics cards, they will run in a CrossfireX setup. As I said, the devil is in the details, in this case "(blue @ x16 mode, grey @ x4 mode)", which confirms that the second slot will run with a much lower bandwidth.

The best specification, in terms of accuracy *and* precision, would be

1x PCIe x16 slot
1x physical PCIe x16 slot running at PCIe x4 mode

But that doesn't look anywhere near as good in marketing copy

You'll find that the same format is used by pretty much all manufacturers, for any 770, 780, 870 and 880 motherboards with 2 PCIe x16 slots. It's technically accurate, and they'll usually include that disclaiming "(<colour> @ x4 mode)" in a CYA move ("no no, we said in the spec that one of them ran in x4 mode"), hoping that the average consumer won't read that and will think "Ooooh, what a cheap crossfire supporting motherboard, I'll have one of those!".

I hate marketing departments so much sometimes...

[Attila the Bun]

That's more useful info squirreled away for future purchasing.

I hate marketing departments so much sometimes...

You me both Comrade

[scaryjim]

That's more useful info squirreled away for future purchasing.

You know, nothing says "thanks" like a click on the "thanks" button...

[Attila the Bun]

You know, nothing says "thanks" like a click on the "thanks" button...

That's very kind of you

Although there was no need to thank me really there wasn't.