Asus M4A87TD/USB3 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. The M4A87TD/USB3 Motherboard3. Testing Methodlogy, BIOS and Overclocking4. PCMark Vantage5. 3DMark Vantage and 116. SiSoftware Sandra 20117. Cinebench R10 and R11.58. Super Pi Mod 1.59. KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark V1 (4)10. Media Encoding: Cyberlink MediaEspresso 611. Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

We recently looked at one of Asus' high end M4A90GTD Pro/USB3 motherboards that impressed us with its extensive feature set and strong performance.  The only drawback of this board was the high price which put it out into the ‘deeper wallet' category.  So we were excited when Asus offered us a lower-end board that is a little more wallet friendly while retaining a good feature-set.

Today we have Asus' M4A87TD/USB3.0 motherboard in our labs which is designed for those with a mid range budget.  And, with Sandy Bridge setups being well priced, we can only really see low to mid-range users opting for AMD setups, so this board will probably sell better than its higher end brother.

Specification

CPU	AMD Socket AM3 ;Phenom™II /Athlon™II /Sempron™ 100 Series Processors AMD 140W CPU Support AMD Cool ‘n' Quiet™ Technology Supports 45nm CPU
Chipset	AMD 870 / SB850
System Bus	Up to 5200 MT/s ; HyperTransport™ 3.0 interface
Memory	4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory Dual Channel memory architecture * DDR3 Memory Ultra Low Voltage support ** Due to OS limitation, when installing total memory of 4GB capacity or more, Windows® 32-bit operation system may only recognize less than 3GB. Hence, a total installed memory of less than 3GB is recommended. ***Due to CPU spec., AMD 100 and 200 series CPUs support up to DDR3 1066MHz. With ASUS design, this motherboard can support up to DDR3 1333MHz **** Refer to www.asus.com for the memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists).
Expansion Slots	1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1 3 x PCI
Storage	SB850 Chipset 6 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports Support RAID 0,1,5,10 JMicron® JMB368 PATA controller 1 xUltraDMA 133/100 for up to 2 PATA devices
LAN	Realtek® 8111E Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
Audio	VIA VT1818 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC – Supports 192kHz/ 24bit BD Lossless Sound – Supports Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking – Optical S/PDIF Out port at back I/O – ASUS Noise Filter
USB	NEC USB 3.0 controller – 2 x USB 3.0 ports (Blue, at back panel) AMD® SB850 – 12 x USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 6 ports at back panel)
ASUS Unique Features	ASUS Xtreme Design ASUS Hybrid Processor – TurboV EVO – Turbo Unlocker, TurboV, Turbo Key, CPU Level UP ASUS Hybrid Switch – Core Unlocker ASUS Hybrid OS — Express Gate ASUS Power Solutions – ASUS EPU ASUS Exclusive Features – MemOK! ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution – ASUS Fanless Design: Heat sink solution – ASUS Fan Xpert ASUS EZ DIY – ASUS O.C. Profile – ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 – ASUS EZ Flash 2 – ASUS MyLogo 2 – Multi-language BIOS
Overclocking Features	Precision Tweaker 2: – vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.003125V increment – vDDNB: Adjustable CPU NB voltage at 0.003125V increment – vNB: Adjustable North Bridge voltage at 0.00625V increment – vHT bus: Adjustable PCH voltage at 0.00625V increment – vDRAM Bus: Adjustable DRAM voltage at 0.00625V increment SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection) – Internal Base Clock tuning from 100MHz up to 600MHz at 1MHz increment – PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment Overclocking Protection: – ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Back Panel I/O Ports	1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical) 1 x LAN(RJ45) port 8 -Channel Audio I/O 1 x PS/2 Keyboard (Purple) 1 x PS/2 Mouse (Green) 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (Blue) 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
Internal I/O Connectors	3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports 1 x IDE connector 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors 1 x CPU Fan connector 1 x Chassis Fan connector (3-pin) 1 x Power Fan connector 1 x S/PDIF Out Header 1 x Core Unlocker Switch 1 x MemOK! Button Front panel audio connector 1 x COM connector 1 x Clear CMOS jumper 24-pin ATX Power connector 4-pin ATX 12V Power connector System Panel
BIOS	8 Mb Flash ROM , SPI, AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
Manageability	WfM 2.0,DMI 2.0,WOL by PME,WOR by PME,PXE
Accessories	1 x Ultra DMA 133/100 cable 2 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s cables 1 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables 1 x IO Shield 2 in 1 Q-connector (USB, System panel; Retail version only) User's manual
Support Disc	Drivers Anti-virus software (OEM version) ASUS Utilities ASUS Update
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor 12 inch x 8.4 inch ( 30.5 cm x 21.3 cm )

Asus supply the M4A87TD/USB3 in a green motherboard box which should provide plenty of protection for the board in transit.  The front of the box is littered with various logos which advertise a number of the boards' features and turning the box over reveals a more detailed breakdown of these features and the boards' specification.

The included bundle contains everything we could ask for from a board at this price point.  It consists of three SATA cables, a selection of manuals, a software CD, an IDE cable and Asus' Q-Connector.  The Q-Connector enables easy installation of the front panel buttons and indicator lights as we can plug all these devices into the connector outside the case before they are all inserted together into the board.

The black and blue colour scheme that Asus have used for the M4A87TD looks great and should fit in well aesthetically with most setups.  There are quite a few noticeable differences between this board and the M4A89GTD Pro that we looked at recently including its narrower form and lack of any heatsinks on the voltage regulation circuitry.

One way in which Asus have cut costs compared to the M4A89GTD Pro is by using the AMD 870 chipset instead of the 890GX.  This doesn't have an onboard GPU so you must have a discrete graphics card for your system.  But we can't imagine that this would be a problem for the majority of our readers as they will require more power than an onboard GPU has to offer.

Asus have only included a single full length PCI Express lane on the M4A87TD so Crossfire is not supported on this board.  This lane runs at x16 and is accompanied by PCI Express x1 and x4 slots on either side.  There are also three legacy PCI lanes for those who require them.

Even though the M4A87TD is narrower than the M4A89GTD, Asus have retained the same distance between the CPU socket and RAM by moving the 24-pin power connector further down the board.  This should provide room for most CPU coolers although larger ones will still obstruct the RAM slots.  There are four slots in total which support up to 16GB of 1600MHz ram (2000MHz OC).

In the bottom right hand corner of the motherboard we find the six SATA 6Gbps ports.  These are all attached vertically on the motherboard which makes it difficult to manage cables as neatly as you can with perpendicular connectors.  The IDE connector has been shifted up the motherboard next to the RAM slots.

The included selection of rear panel I/O connections should be sufficient for most users.  Although the connections seem a lot less plentiful than those on the M4A89GTD, this is largely in part due to a lack of display outputs.  The connections consist of two PS/2 connectors, 6 USB2.0 ports, 2 USB3.0 ports, an RJ-45 ethernet jack and three 3.5mm audio jacks.

We decided to use the AMD Phenom II X6 1075T  processor for testing as it is perfectly matched to this mid-range AMD board.  We combined this with a CoolIT Vantage A.L.C. which provides more than ample cooling performance for this processor.

Test System

Motherboard: Asus M4A87GT
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR3
PSU: Corsair HX850W
Chassis: Lian Li B25F
Graphics Card: HIS Radeon HD 5830 Turbo
Cooler: Coolit Vantage
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Hard Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark Vantage
Super Pi Mod 1.5
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 7
FRAPS Professional
SiSoftware Sandra 2011
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5
KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4)
Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC

All the latest BIOS updates and WHQL drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

For our tests, we decided to overclock the system using the ‘Auto OC' functionality of Asus' TurboV software.  This achieved a reasonable overclock of 16%, taking the system from 3.00GHz to 3.50GHz by upping the base clock from 200MHz to 232Mhz, and leaving the multiplier at 15x.

The BIOS included with the motherboard is a standard affair, containing all the options we could possibly ask for.  We have included the full set of BIOS screenshots below.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a 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.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

The PCMark Vantage scores achieved by this motherboard are quite impressive, in part a result of having an SSD in the test system.  The overclocked results show an improvement over the stock settings although this benchmark takes all aspects of the system into account so the difference is quite small.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The overclocked system performed better in both test, most noticeeabely in the CPU score in 3DMark Vantaqge.  The overall improvement isn't as large as this benchmark also takes GPU performance into account.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.  Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

•       Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)

•       Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)

•       Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)

•       Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)

•       Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

•       SMP – Multi-Processor

•       MC – Multi-Core

•       SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading

•       MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions

•       GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics

•       NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access

•       AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86

•       IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The SiSandra benchmarks are based much more heavily on CPU performance than the previous two so overclocking the system yields greater scores in the tests.

Cinebench R10 has since been replaced by V11.5, but many people have a better indication of relative performance by the results from R10 – after all it has been around for years. We will however include R11.5 results on the following page. For those who don’t know Cinebench is not just a mere synthetic benchmarking application, it is based on the rendering engine from Cinema 4D.

The CPU test renders a 3D scene photo-realistically while applying performance intensive functions such as area light sources, procedural shaders, Ambient Occlusion and multi level reflections. Especially when used on faster, multi core CPU systems, MAXON CINEBENCH R10 delivers much more accurate results.

Cinebench R11.5 is the newest revision of the popular benchmark from Maxon. The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Cinebench analysis the CPU rendering performance which is greatly boosted by having six cores available; the scores wouldn't be as impressive with two, three or four core CPUs.  In Cinebench R10, we saw speedups of 4.41x and 4.93x with stock and overclocked setups respectively in the multi core tests.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 32 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

The score achieved by this system certainly isn't the most impressive we've ever seen with Super Pi but there was a noticeable improvement in performance when the test system was overclocked.

For as long as we can remember enthusiasts around the world have been keen to see how their systems perform with many commercially available benchmarks from such companies as

Futuremark.  While these applications are extremely useful to a wide audience sometimes it can be helpful to focus on a ‘real world’ application which many of us use on an almost daily basis.

You can get the KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4) here. Please note lower times are better as this means less time is taken by the system to process the commands.

	Stock	OC @ 3.50GHZ
1. Texturiser (1)	4.8	3.6
2. CMYK	2.0	1.6
3. RGB	2.5	1.9
4. Ink Outlines	41.2	34.7
5. Dust & Stratches	3.2	2.7
6. Watercolor	41.3	34.9
7. Texturiser (2)	4.7	3.8
8. Stained Glass	52.4	44.7
9. Mosiac Tiles	30.9	18.8
10. Extrude	342.8	234.2
11. Rough Pastels	26.5	20.1
12. Smart Blur	129.5	119.6
13. Underpainting	48.7	52.5
14. Mosiac Tiles	31.8	19.6
15. Spherize	5.0	4.5
16. Palette Knife	43.7	45.1
17. Sponge	53.0	44.8
18. Smudge Stick	10.6	8.4
Total	874.6	695.5

Some components of the Photoshop benchmark benefit more than others from the increased clock speed when overclocked.  But there is still a significant reduction in the time taken to complete the benchmark when the system is overclocked.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

•       Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.

•       Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.

•       Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.

•       Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.

•       Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.

•       Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 1080P AVI file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. We will also be converting a 15 track album from MP3 to M4A format. These are common procedures for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

MediaEspresso is one of the best media encoders on the market with predefined profiles for most portable devices.  Overclocking our system showed significant improvements in encoding performance which could be improved further if we enabled GPU processing.

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City is a standalone compilation of the DLC episodes for Grand Theft Auto IV, containing both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on one disc. It was released alongside the DLC release of The Ballad of Gay Tony on 29 October 2009 for the Xbox 360 and released on 13 April 2010 for Microsoft Windows and Playstation 3. It does not require a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV to play, nor is an Xbox Live or PSN account necessary (except for multiplayer).

The engine is still extremely demanding for this game – even months later for the newest hardware. The latest version changes some of the rendering calls and is used partially within the latest Max Payne engine.  We tested the game using near maximum settings as displayed below.

The increase of about 8 fps when overclocked is quite a lot considering the modest overclock.  The 1075T CPU enabled us to play the game at near maximum settings even at stock settings.

The M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard is a solid contender from Asus that boasts an impressive feature set for a mid range board.  The blue and black colour scheme also makes for a very attractive appearance.  The only drawback of this motherboard is the lack of Crossfire support, although this won't be an issue for many users, especially those on a budget.

It is really great to see USB3 on a mid-range board like this although there is no front panel connector included.  There is also a plentiful selection of USB2.0 ports and headers for older peripherals.  Even though there is a few areas in which Asus have made compromises to reduce the cost of this board compared to the M4A89GTD Pro but most of them won't affect the average user.  The innovative Q-connector is also included on this board and it really saves a lot of hassle when installing the motherboard into a case.

The M4A87TD/USB3 can be yours for £75 at YoYotech which makes it good value for money.  Combined with a mid range CPU and discrete GPU, this motherboard would be perfect for casual gamers or those who want a decent level of power without paying over the odds.

KitGuru says: A good value motherboard that boasts an impressive feature set.

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