Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. The Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 Motherboard3. Testing Methodology, BIOS and Overclocking4. PCMark Vantage5. 3DMark Vantage and 116. SiSoft Sandra 20117. Cinebench R10 and R11.58. Super Pi Mod 1.59. KitGuru Photoshop Bench V1 (4)10. Media Encoding: Cyberlink MediaEspresso11. Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

Even after the launch of Sandy Bridge from Intel, there are still a lot of users out there who will opt for an AMD based system so it is our duty, as Gurus of Kit, to review some of the latest and greatest AMD based motherboards.

Today we are going to be looking at the M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 motherboard from Asus which is geared for users who want to overclock their system.  It features their ‘Xtreme Design' and dual intelligent processors design which we've seen on most of their latest motherboards so users can squeeze every possible ounce of performance from their system.

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 890GX/SB850
System Bus	Up to 5200 MT/s ; HyperTransport™ 3.0
Memory	4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1333/1066 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory Dual Channel memory architecture *AMD AM3 100 and 200 series CPU support up to DDR3 1066MHz **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. ***Refer to www.asus.com for the memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists).
Expansion Slots	2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 support ATI CrossFireX™ technology(@dual x8 speed) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1 2 x PCI
VGA	Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 GPU Multi-VGA output support: HDMI, DVI-D and RGB ports Supports HDMI with max. resolution 1920 x 1200 (1080P) Supports DVI with max. resolution 2560×1600 @60Hz Supports RGB with max. resolution 2560×1440 @75Hz Support H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, DirectX10.1 and OpenGL2.0 Support Shader Model 4.1, Universal Video Decoder (UVD) 2.0 Max. UMA Memory Size: 512 MB 128MB DDR3 1333 sideport memory support Hybrid CrossFireX support
Storage	SB850 Chipset 6 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports Support RAID 0,1,5,10 JMicron® JMB361 PATA and SATA controller 1 xUltraDMA 133/100 for up to 2 PATA devices 1 xExternal Power eSATA 3.0Gb/s port
LAN	Realtek® 8111E Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
Audio	ALC 892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC – BD Audio Layer Content Protection – Support 192khz/24bit True BD Lossless Sound – DTS Surround Sensation UltraPC – Supports Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking – Optical S/PDIF Out ports at back I/O – ASUS Noise Filter
IEEE 1394	VIA® 6308P controller supports 2 x 1394a port(s) (1 at mid-board; 1 at back panel)
USB	12 x USB 2.0 ports (8 ports at mid-board, 4 ports at back panel) 2 x USB 3.0 ports (2 ports at back panel)
ASUS Unique Features	ASUS Xtreme Design ASUS Hybrid Processor — TurboV EVO – Turbo Unlocker, Auto Tuning, TurboV, CPU Level UP and GPU Boost ASUS Hybrid Switch – Core Unlocker – Turbo Key II ASUS Hybrid OS — Express Gate ASUS Power Solutions – 8+2 Phase Power Design – ASUS EPU ASUS Exclusive Features – MemOK! ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution – ASUS Fanless Design: Heat pipe solution – ASUS Fan Xpert ASUS EZ DIY – ASUS Q-DIMM – ASUS O.C. Profile – ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 – ASUS EZ Flash 2 – ASUS MyLogo 2 – Percision Tweaker 3 – Multi-language BIOS
Overclocking Features	Precision Tweaker 3 – vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.003125V increment – vDDNB: Adjustable CPU NB voltage at 0.003125V increment – vCPU PLL: Adjustable CPU_PLL voltage at 0.00625V increment – vHT bus: Adjustable PCH voltage at 0.00625V increment – vDRAM Bus: Adjustable DRAM voltage at 0.00625V increment – iChipset: Adjustable iChipset voltage at 0.00625V increment SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection) – PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment – Internal Base Clock tuning from 100MHz up to 600MHz at 1MHz increment Overclocking Protection – ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Back Panel I/O Ports	1 x DVI 1 x D-Sub 1 x HDMI 1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical) 1 x IEEE 1394a 1 x LAN(RJ45) port 8 -Channel Audio I/O 1 x PS/2 Keyboard (Purple) 1 x Power eSATA 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports 2 x USB 3.0 ports
Internal I/O Connectors	4 x USB connectors support additional 8 USB ports 1 x IDE connector 1 x IEEE 1394a connector 1 x CPU Fan connector 1 x Power Fan connector 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors 1 x Chassis Fan connector (4-pin) 1 x Chassis Fan connector (3-pin) 1 x S/PDIF Out Header 1 x Core Unlocker Switch 1 x Turbo Key II Switch 1 x MemOK! Button Front panel audio connector 1 x COM connector 1 x Clear CMOS jumper 1 x 24-pin ATX Power connector 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector System Panel
BIOS	16 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 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables 1 x Q-Shield 1 x VGA Switch card 2 in 1 Q-connector (USB, System panel; Retail version only) User's manual
Support Disc	Drivers Anti-virus software (OEM version) ASUS Update ASUS Utilities
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor 12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x24.4 cm )

Asus have used a pale green theme for the motherboard box which of the standard variety.  As usual the top of the box sports a myriad of different logos and stickers which elude to various features of the board packaged within.  Turning the box over reveals a much more detailed breakdown of the board's features and specifications.

The included bundle is very much what we would expect from a class leading manufacturer like Asus and contains almost everything we could reasonably ask for.  The bundle consists of four SATA cables, an IDE cable and a selection of user guides.  They also include a VGA Switch adapter and their innovative Q-connector which makes installation even simpler.

For the M4A89GTD, Asus have stuck with their usual colour scheme which features blue fittings on a black PCB.  This looks great and should fit in well aesthetically with most setups.  It is clear from a glance that Asus havve designed this board with overclocking in mind due to the sizable heatsink that cools the electrical components surrounding the CPU socket.  Of course part of this covers the northbridge as AMD have yet to combine them into a single chip.

Asus have decided to use the AMD 890GX chipset for this board which supports DDR3 memory and has an integrated Radeon HD 4290 IGP.  We don't expect that many people who purchase this high-end board will make use of the IGP, though, as they are likely to opt for a more powerful dedicated solution.

The M4A90GTD Pro/USB3 supports Crossfire through the two PCIe x8 lanes.  If you plan to use a single card setup, you need to install a ‘VGA Switch Adapter' into the top PCIe slot to enable full PCI x16 functionality in the primary (blue) slot.  Asus also include a PCI Express x4 slot a PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots for expansion cards.

As usual, the RAM slots flank the CPU socket on the right hand side.  There are four of them in total, supporting up to 16GB of 1333MHz (or 1866MHz OC) memory.  Those who plan to use a sizable CPU heatsink should be aware that these are very close to the CPU socket so low profile memory will be required.

In the bottom right corner of the board we find six SATA 6Gbps ports which support RAID 0, 1 and 5.  Two of these are attached at 90 degrees to the board to aid cable management.  The IDE connector is also angled at 90 degrees but we doubt that many people will actually use this.  As usual, we also find the front panel connectors in the bottom right corner of the board.  Installling these is made a lot easier by Asus' ‘Q-connector' which prevents installation.

The vast selection of I/O connections certainly reflects the high-end nature of this board.  The two USB3.0 ports on the back panel are accompanied by two USB2.0 ports and four internal USB2.0 headers which add the possibility of a further eight connectors.  There is also a PS2 connector, VGA, DVI and HDMI connectors, an RJ-45 ethernet jack and an eSATA port.  Audio connectivity is catered for by six 3.5mm jacks and a optical S/PDIF connection.

We decided to use the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition processor for testing as it is perfectly matched to this high-end AMD board.  We combined this with a Noctua C12P heatsink which provides more than ample cooling performance for this processor.

Test System

Motherboard: Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR3
PSU: Corsair TX650W
Chassis: Corsair Graphite 600T
Graphics Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 470
Cooler: Noctua C12P
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Hard Drive: Corsair Force F40 40GB SSD

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 3.20GHz to 3.80GHz by upping the base clock from 200MHz to 232Mhz, and leaving the multiplier at 16x.

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.

Our PCMark scores are boosted significantly by using a SSD as the system drive so those using mechanical hard drive would get a lower score in this benchmark.  Overclocking the system improved the overall score by a respectable amount, although the difference isn't as pronounced as in other benchmarks which rely more on CPU power.

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.

Overclocking the system showed reasonable impreovements in performance in both 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11.

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

In SiSoft Sandra we really see the benefits of having the Auto OC function, improving the benchmark scores significantly all round.

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 R10 really shows us the benefits of having six cores in programs which can utilise multiple threads.  At stock settings, the score improved by 4.43x when multiple threads were utilised and by 4.83x when the system was overclocked.  We also saw a large improvement in the R11.5 score when overclocked.

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.

Overclocking the system reduced the time taken by a minute which is quite impressive for a 600MHz overclock.

For as long as I 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 @ 3.80GHZ
1. Texturiser (1)	3.6	3.5
2. CMYK	1.9	1.7
3. RGB	2.1	2.0
4. Ink Outlines	33.5	32.3
5. Dust & Stratches	3.2	2.8
6. Watercolor	33.6	32.5
7. Texturiser (2)	3.9	3.7
8. Stained Glass	48.2	46.2
9. Mosiac Tiles	18.2	17.4
10. Extrude	233.9	214.7
11. Rough Pastels	19.3	18.6
12. Smart Blur	114.8	112.2
13. Underpainting	50.6	48.9
14. Mosiac Tiles	18.8	18.2
15. Spherize	3.7	3.3
16. Palette Knife	43.4	41.9
17. Sponge	43.2	41.7
18. Smudge Stick	8.6	8.3
Total	684.5	649.9

We didn't see huge improvements in the Photoshop benchmark, reducing the time taken by around 35 seconds.

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.

In this real world test, we noticed reasonable improvements in media encoding.  These scores could be improved further by using the GPU processing features in MediaEspresso.

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 maximum settings.

In this CPU intensive game, the performance improvements were noticeable with an increase of 4 fps in the minimum frame rate.  This allowed us to play the game smoothly at maximum settings..

The Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 is certainly one of the best featured AMD boards on the market as it includes everything that we could ask for.  Although it doesn't have an front panel USB3 header like some Sandy Bridge boards we've looked at, USB3 is included on the rear I/O panel for those who require it.  But for those who don't, there is an identical version of the board available for less money without a USB3 controller.

Many users will favour the black and blue colour scheme of the board which makes it easy to match other components aesthetically.  Crossfire X is supported, despite each PCIe lane being limited to x8 when two cards are installed.  Even though Asus insist in their manual that we must use the VGA switch adapter when using one card to enable x16 in the primary PCIe lane, we found that the difference in performance without the adapter was very small with our Zotac GeForce GTX 470 graphics card.

The final decision on what motherboard to buy will probably come down to price for a lot of customers.  And, at a price of £115 at YoYoTech, some users are likely to be deterred as there are equally well featured boards out there for less money like the ASRock 890GX Extreme4 motherboard we looked at a while back which can be had for about £20 less.

KitGuru says: A well featured board that performs well, despite being a little more pricey than alternatives.

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