Review: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 - Thuban's best friend? - Mainboard - HEXUS.net

Setup and notes

Motherboard	ASUS Crosshair IV Formula	Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H
Price	£165.55	£104.41
Chipset	890FX	890GX
CPU	AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
BIOS revision	0707 (26/04/2010)	FBC (06/05/2010)
Mainboard software	Catalyst 10.3
Memory	4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair DDR3-1,600
Memory timings and speed	9-9-9-24-1T @ 1,600MHz
Discrete graphics	Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB
Discrete graphics driver	Catalyst 10.3
Disk drive	Corsair Nova V128
Operating system	Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
PSU	Corsair HX850W

Tests

Benchmarks	SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), aggregate bandwidth SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), memory latency HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places CINEBENCH R11.5 multi-CPU render x264 encoding test - both passes recorded. HDTach - SATA average read speed HDTach - SATA burst speed HDTach - USB3.0 performance HDTach - FireWire performance Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 - 1,680x1,050 HQ Power-consumption tests - idle, 2D load, and 3D load.

Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), aggregate bandwidth
SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), memory latency
HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places
CINEBENCH R11.5 multi-CPU render
x264 encoding test - both passes recorded.

HDTach - SATA average read speed
HDTach - SATA burst speed
HDTach - USB3.0 performance
HDTach - FireWire performance

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 - 1,680x1,050 HQ

Power-consumption tests - idle, 2D load, and 3D load.

Testing notes

We're taking a look at the top-of-the-range board against a quality 890GX chipset-based mainboard from Gigabyte. The 890GPA-UD3H features integrated graphics but we'll be running all tests with a Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB discrete graphics card. Costing some £60 less than the ASUS, the Gigabyte also ships with USB 3.0 and FireWire, although not as much attention has been paid to cooling and overclocking.